The  Church  and  Labour 


A   SERIES  OF   SIX  TRACTS 


REV.    L.    McKENNA,    S.J.,  MA. 


-5^79-3 


SANi .  .:a.  calif, 

nacw  it?orh 

P.   J.  KENEDY   h-   SONS 

1914 


^^^^^/5- 


:-«*iv^4id>i^«^4MPM.^* 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

No.  I — The  Church  and  Labour         .        .  .       l 

No.  2 — The  Church  and  Working  Men      .  .21 

No.  3 — ^The  Church  and  Working  Women  .  .41 

No.  4 — The  Church  and  the  Working  Chii,d  .     61 

No.  5 — The  Church  and  Trades  Unions     .  .     81 

No.  6— The  Church  and  Social,  Work         .  .105 


Ntfjtl  ©bstat : 

WILLIAM  HENRY,  S.J., 

Cena,  Theol.  Def, 

Empn'mi  potest : 

»i«  GULIELMU3, 

Archiep.  Dublinen., 

Hibeyniae  Primas 


"  THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR. " 

IT  was  for  the  use  and  benefit  of  the  whole  human 
race  that  God  destined  the  material  resources 
which  He  placed  in  the  world.  To-day  there  is  a 
monstrous  inequahty  in  the  distribution  of  these 
resources.  A  comparatively  small  number  of  men  hold 
a  disproportionate  amount  of  them.  In  France,  for 
instance,  a  hundredth  part  of  the  nation  owns  half  of 
the  nation's  wealth.  In  England  and  the  United  States 
one-tenth  of  the  people  hold  nine-tenths  of  the  whole 
country's  property. 

The  wealthy  few  now  rule  the  world. 
The  contrast     They  have  done  so  before,   but  never 

to-day  between  precisely    in    virtue    of    their    wealth. 

the  wealthy  few  They  were  patriarchs,  patricians,  chief- 
tains of  clans,  feudal  nobles  acknow- 
ledging responsibihties  and  bearing  heavy  burdens.  To- 
day wealth  making  no  sacrifices  for  the  pubhc  good, 
rules  in  its  own  right,  and  exercises  a  more  despotic 
sway  than  any  form  of  authority  hitherto  known.  It 
has  armies  and  fleets  at  command.  It  has  myriads  of 
placemen,  or  would-be  placemen,  in  utter  dependence. 
It  is  highly  centralised,  and  can  exert  a  great  power  at 
any  point.  It  can  at  any  moment  cast  thousands  of 
households  into  intolerable  misery.  Yet,  though  cen- 
tralised, it  is  not  open  to  attack.  It  does  not,  as  the 
kings  of  old,  dwell  in  castles  that  can  be  stormed  by  an 
angry  people.  On  the  contrary  it  stands  as  the  embodi- 
ment of  legality,  order,  security,  peace — even  of  popiilar 
will.  CapitaHsm,  using  the  work  of  the  labouring  classes, 
has  vastly  increased  the  wealth  of  the  world  ;  yet  it 
strives  to  prevent  these  labouring  classes  from  benefiting 
by  this  increase.  It  is  constantly  drawing  up  into  itself 
that  wealth  and  diverting  it  from  useful  purposes.    To 


2  THE   CHURCH  AND   LABOUR. 

crown  all,  by  its  wild  pursuit  of  pleasure  and  its  ostenta- 
tious luxury,  it  renders  still  less  bearable  the  lot  of  the 
dispossessed. 

Over  against  this  small  number  of  very 

and  the  poor  rich  men  there  are  the  vast  masses  of 
multitude.  the  poor.  In  Prussia  two-thirds  of  the 
wage-earners  receive  less  than  i8s.  a 
week.  Fifty  per  cent,  of  the  American  people  are  in 
severe  poverty.  At  Paris  every  seventh  and  in  London 
every  twelfth  person  is  a  pauper  dependent  on  State 
aid.  Every  great  city  has  a  large  population  living  in 
homeless,  hopeless,  helpless  squalor  and  wretchedness. 
To  use  the  words  of  Pope  Leo — "  A  very  small  number 
of  rich  men  have  been  able  to  lay  on  the  masses  of  the 
poor  a  yoke  little  better  than  slavery  itself." 

This  suffering  state  of  the  poor  is  all  the  more  galling 
as  it  is  in  ironic  contrast  with  the  power  which  in  theory 
they  possess.  They  have  votes — they  are  appealed  to  as 
the  ultimate  depositories  of  all  power,  yet  nowhere  have 
they  been  able  to  exert  that  power  for  the  redress  of 
their  grievances. 

Is  it  any  wonder,  then,  that  the  rich 

The  struggle     and   the   poor  should   form  two  hostile 

between  these  camps,  that  they  should  feel  for  each 
other  bitter  hatred,  that  their  hatred 
should  break  out  in  war  ?  And  such  war  !  Those  ter- 
rible strikes  !  Factories  shut  down,  vast  systems  of 
machinery  idle,  trade  ruined,  the  social  life  of  nations 
paralysed;  homes  broken  up,  men  growhng  and  breaking 
into  violence,  women  pining  with  anxiety  and  hunger, 
children  starving. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  old  questions  which  agitated 
the  world  should  have  lost  much  of  their  interest  ?  It  is 
not  now  quarrels  between  princes  or  rival  claimants  to 
thrones,  it  is  not  even  commercial  or  territorial  dis- 
putes between  nations  that  cause  most  anxiety  in  the 
council  chambers  of  the  world.  It  is  the  question  as  to 
whether  the  constitution  of  our  present  societj'  is  not 
fundamentally  wrong,  it  is  the  question  as  to  how  the 
wealth    of   each   nation   should   be   distributed    among 


THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR.  3 

its  members  ;  it  is  the  social,  or — what  is  the  same  thing 
— the  labour  questioii,  that  urgently  presses  for  solution 
in  every  country. 

The  struggle  over  this  question  is 
in  Ireland.  raging  not  merely  in  France — to-day 
as  ever  the  leader  in  revolutionary 
action — but  in  Russia,  which  has  just  emerged  from  the 
Middle  Ages,  in  England,  the  land  of  tradition  and  slow 
change,  in  Germany,  fettered  by  her  iron  military 
organisation.  Now  this  struggle,  raging  on  the  Conti- 
nent and  in  England,  is  a  real  and  very  pressing  danger 
for  us  in  Ireland  too.  Indeed  it  has  been  going  on 
among  us,  but  it  has  been  disgiused  under  the  form  of  a 
national  struggle.  Our  whole  social  system  is  part  of 
the  social  system  of  England,  the  classic  land  of  capital- 
istic abuse,  but  hardly  any  except  the  suffering  strata  of 
that  system  are  to  be  found  in  Ireland.  The  population 
of  Ireland  consists  chiefly  of  a  relatively  large  middle 
class  struggling  against  great  difficulties,  and  of  a  rela- 
tively enormous  proletariat  strugghng  desperately  on 
the  verge  of  pauperism.  Both  these  classes  have  united 
against  the  abuses  of  capital,  but  in  doing  so  they  have 
directed  their  attacks,  not  against  cap'tal  as  such,  but 
against  capital  as  represented  by  a  foreign  Government. 
Thus  in  Ireland  the  struggle  between  capital  and  the 
suffering  classes  has  not  had  hitherto  the  character  of  a 
social  war,  which  it  has  on  the  Continent.  The  suffering 
classes  have  not  been  led  to  confuse  the  abuses  of  capital 
with  the  rights  of  property,  and  with  the  principles  on 
which  all  society  is  founded. 

But  circumstances  are  rapidly  changing.  It  is  likely 
that  the  two  forces  now  locked  in  a  life  and  death 
struggle  on  the  Continent  will  soon  be  engaged  in  a  fierce 
conflict  in  Ireland  too,  ranged  under  the  same  banners, 
urged  on  by  the  same  battle  cries,  animated  by  the  same 
bitter  feehngs  on  each  side. 

The  strikes,  rapidly  becoming  more  frequent,  notably 
the  great  strike  of  eighteen  months  ago,  which  paralysed 
the  life  and  trade  of  the  country  and  was  accompanied 
by  disorder  in  many  of  our  towns,  seem  to  show  that 

T* 


4  THE   CHURCH  AND  LABOUR. 

there  is  a  spiiit  of  discontent  and  a  craving  for  change 
deep  down  in  the  hearts  of  our  labouring  population. 
Indeed  a  slight  acquaintance  with  the  labouring  classes 
leaves  one  in  no  doubt  on  the  point. 

Now,  that  the  poor  classes  should  be 

The  danger  to    discontented  is  not  astonishing.     Their 

Society  coraes    discontent  is  well-founded.    Their  desire 
from  the        Qf  change  is  legitimate  and  praiseworthy. 

oftlnfnspSfng'  Society  is  sick  to  death.     She  must  be 

Capital  and     cured.      But    her    disease   is   not   more 

Labour.        dangerous  than  the  remedies  which  men 

— on  the  one  side  selfish  and  unfeeling, 

on  the  other  side  desperate,  envious,  and  vengeful — 

propose  to  apply. 

The  real  danger  that  threatens  the  world  comes  from 
this,  that  both  the  mighty  forces  now  struggling  foi 
mastery — ^labour  and  capital — reject  the  moral  and 
religious  bonds  without  which  society  cannot  hope  to 
hold  together. 

On  the  one  side,  wealth  claims  to  do  as  it  pleases 
regardless  of  consequence  to  the  poor.  On  the  other, 
numbers  claim  a  divine  right  to  rule.  Liberalism*  in  one 
or  other  of  its  forms  is  the  favourite  doctrine  of  wealth  ; 
Sociahsm  in  some  form  tends  to  be  the  gospel  of  Labour. 
Liberahsm  justifies  the  rich  in  exploiting  the  poor ; 
Sociahsm  justifies  the  poor  in  robbing  the  rich.  Liberal- 
ism commends  itself  to  the  rich  man,  for  it  flatters  his 
avarice  and  pride  ;  Socialism  appeals  to  the  poor  man, 
for  it  sets  before  his  eyes  the  alluring  prospect  of  a  state 
where  all  having  little  work  to  do  will  enjoy  in  equal 
measure  the  good  things  of  life. 

*  By  the  terms  Liberalism,  Liberal,  etc.,  frequently  occurring 
in  these  pages  are  meant  certain  doctrines  or  ideas  the  general 
tendency  of  which  is  explained  on  pages  9-10.  These  terms  are 
often  loosely  used  with  reference  to  those  who  favour  demo- 
cratic institutions,  and  even  to  those  who  are  generous  in  their 
private  dealings  with  their  neighbours.  Needless  to  say  that 
such  are  not  the  meanings  of  these  terms  as  used  in  the  following 
pages.  Still  less  is  any  reference  intended  to  the  principles 
which  are  claimed  as  distinguishing  the  political  party  which  in 
England  is  known  as  the  Liberal  Party, 


THE   CHURCH   AND   LABOUR,  5 

If  Capital  can  carry  out  its  principles  of  Liberalism, 
the  majority  of  mankind,  the  middle  class  as  well  as  the 
poor,  must  sink  to  a  still  more  hopeless  depth  of  servi- 
tude, destitution,  misery  and  crime.  If  Labour  realises 
its  Socialistic  schemes,  our  property,  our  liberty,  our 
family  life,  our  peace,  all  that  we  hold  most  dear,  will 
be  attacked.  Human  society — that  most  dehcate  organ- 
ism in  which  physical  environment  and  economic  force 
and  the  myriad  influences  of  men's  desires,  passions, 
prejudices,  customs,  render  the  result  of  even  the 
slightest  interference  impossible  to  conjecture — is  to  be 
handed  over  to  be  experimented  on  by  fanciful  theorists 
and  revengeful  fanatics  and  unscrupulous  schemers. 
Revolution  always  tends  to  fall  into  the  hands  of 
extremists  ;  and  it  is  the  wild,  revolutionary  Socialism 
of  the  Continent,  and  not  the  milder  forms  of  English 
Socialism,  which  is  likely  in  time  to  win  the  support 
of  the  masses. 

Yet  of  the  two — Liberalism  and  Socialism — Liberahsm 
is,  perhaps,  the  more  dangerous.  Sociahsm  is  indeed 
only  a  reaction,  and  not  even  the  worst  form  of 
reaction,  against  the  accursed  Liberalism  which, 
smce  the  eighteenth  century,  has  been  making  havoc 
of  society. 

You  will,  perhaps,  say  :   "  What  has 
The  duty  of  the  the  Church  to  do  with  all  this  ?      Two 
Church.         great  political  forces  are   pitted  against 
each   other.     Why  should  the  Church 
interfere  ?    She  does  not  intervene  when  two  nations  are 
at  war  ?    Why  should  she  intervene  when  two  classes  of 
society  are  at   war?       PoUtics   are   not   her   domain. 
Should  she  not  be  indifferent    to  all  forms  of  govern- 
ment ?     Pohtical  economy  is    not  her  sphere.     Why, 
then,    should    she     meddle  with    the    modern    social 
question  ?  " 

I  answer  to  this,  in  the  first  place,  that  those  who  speak 
thus  are  in  very  suspicious  company.  Such  language, 
or  something  very  like  it,  is  addressed  to  the  Church 
by  both  the  partisans  of  Liberalism  and  those  of 
Socialism. 


6  THE   CHURCH   AND   LABOUR. 

Socialist  writers  are  as  much  opposed 
Liberalism  the   ^°  ^^^  Church  as  they  are  to  Capitahsm. 
enemy  of        The  official  philosophy  of  Sociahsm  on 
religioa.        the.  Continent,  and  for  the  most  part  in 
England  too,  rejects  all  religion.      "  The 
Church,"  they  say — I  quote  one  of  its  official  organs  in 
France — "  urges    men    to    be    indifferent    to    earthly 
welfare  and  to  work  for  eternal  happiness,  while  we 
Socialists  hold  the  very  opposite  thesis,  for  we  propose 
to  the  suffering  earthly  comfort."    Hence  it  concludes: 
"  The  ends  proposed  by  Sociahsm  and  by  religion  are 
perfectly  irreconcilable."     The  language  of  many  of  the 
leaders  of  Socialism  in  England,  and  of  the  most  widely 
read    Sociahst    paper   in   England  is  similar.       Every- 
where the  Sociahst  cries  to  the  people.    "Seek  ye  first 
the  Kingdom  of  Earth  !  Do  not  bother  about  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven."       Indeed   such  words  have  been  heard  in 
the  capital  of  this  Cathohc  country. 

The  partisan  of  Liberalism  is  just  as 
.    .  decided  as  the  Sociahst  in  resenting  all 

enemySrdigion.  "^terference  of  the  Church.  He  tells  her 
that  she  has  no  earthly  right  to  inter- 
fere in  the  sphere  of  pohtics  or  political 
economy,  or  social  science  ;  and  in  particular  he  insists 
that  she  has  no  right  to  speak  to  him  as  to  the  way  he 
should  make  his  money  or  spend  it  or  conduct  his 
business. 

The  minds  of  many  Catholics,  espe- 

Liberalisra  has   cially  of  those  who,  like  us  in  Ireland, 

infected  the      live   in   a   somewhat   Protestant   atmo- 

public  mind  even  sphere,    have    been    vitiated    by    this 
rn  Ireland.       j^-,        \-  u-  u    v.  i    i    ■ 

Liberalism    which    has    ruled   m    every 

Court   and  Cabinet  in   Europe  for  the 

past  one  hundred  and  fifty  years,  and  has  infected  the 

literature,  the  thought,  the  instincts,  and  the  customs 

of   the   age.      Many   Cathohcs   who   pass   as   religious, 

and    even    as    pious    men,   consider    it    to    be    large- 

mindedness  and  enlightenment  to  hold  that  the  Church's 

authority  should  be  limited  to  strictly  religious  matters, 

and   her  action   to   purely  religious   functions.     They 


THE   CHURCH   AND   LABOUR.  7 

feel  some  irritation  when  the  pastors  or  priests  of  the 

Church  presume  to  speak  of  the  social  or  political  or 

business  relations  which  ought  to  exist  among  men. 

Yet,   though  the  Church's  authority  is  rejected  by 

both  parties  in  the  social  struggle,  and  by  many  of  her 

own    misguided    children,   she    has    no    choice   but    to 

boldly  assert    that    authority,   and    to    set    forth   her 

principles. 

In  the  first  place,  the  miserable  and 

rru    ^^^.      i.      degrading    destitution    to  which  such  a 
The  isnapcn      ,    °  ^       . .  r  ^i      i 

cannot  be       large  proportion  of  the  human  race  is 

indifferent  to    condemned,    their    "  state    httle    better 

the  sufferings  of  than  slavery,"  (to  use  the  Pope's  expres- 

e  poor.       sion),    cannot      leave     her     indifferent. 

People  in  acute  suffering  can  think  of 

nothing  but  their  suffering.    They  cannot  attend  to  the  ^r? 

affairs  of  the  soul  if  their  attention  is  absorbed  by  the 

suffering  of  the  body.    "  A  certain  amount  of  comfort,"  fe^ 

says   St.   Thomas,    "  is   necessary  for   the  practice  of  ^' 

virtue."      It    is    natural,    therefore,    that    the    Church  CS 

should  be  anxious  that  all  men  should  enjoy  at  least  ^ 

that  measure  of  comfort  and  welfare  which  will  enable  C:;; 

them  to  attend  to  her  words  of  salvation.  ^ 

But  it  is  not  merely  as  though  the  Church  found  it  !=- 

expedient  to  interfere.     She  takes  a  bolder,  a  prouder 

stand.  ,' ■ 

She  has  been  set  in  the  world  by  God    "  t^^ 

as  the  authoritative  exponent  of  truth,  c^ 

It  is  her  doty  to  and  has  been  ordered  by  God  to  teach  t^' 

vi^ckAltvume    ^^^  *^^^^  ^°  ^^^  nations.     She  finds  the  Cj!^ 

two  parties  that  divide  the  world  both  Ctj 

ahke  denying  that  truth.      Each  has  its  ^ 

own   remedy   for   the  social   problem,    but  both    ahke  Km 

insist  on  regarding  it  as   a    purely   economic   problem  bi 

to    be    solved    independently  of  the  eternal  principles  ^' 

of   justice  and  moraUty.       Neither    fear    of    persccu-  ^ 

tion  at  the  hands  of  irrehgious   rich  nor   fear  of  vio-  <^ 
lence  at  the  hands  of  the  mob  can  make  her  hesitate 
to  proclaim  those  principles.     She,  therefore,  confident 
in  the  authority  given  her  by  the  Creator  of  all  society, 


8  THE   CHURCH    AND   LABOUR. 

and  obeying   the   commands   of   Christ,   her   founder, 
declares  that  the  doctrines  of  both  parties  are  wrong. 

It  requires  very  httle  consideration  to  see  that  the 
materiahsm  which  underhes  the  various  forms  of  both 
Sociahsm  and  Liberahsm,  and  which  rejects  all  inter- 
ference of  the  moral  law,  especially  in  social  matters, 
is  utterly  at  variance  with  the  fundamental  doctrines 
of  Christianity. 

Every  Christian  knows  that  God,  the 
Creator,  is  the  final  and  supreme  end  of 

because  social  man  ;  that  the  obhgation  laid  on  each 
relations  have  a  individual  to  strive  towards  that  end 
•moral  aspect.    •       i      i    .  -,  jx-        j    j       • 

'^  IS  absolute  and  unconditioned,  domina- 
ting man's  existence  at  all  times  and  in 
all  his  acts.  All  man's  activities  from  the  noblest  ones, 
acts  of  faith  and  hope  and  love  which  have  God  as  their 
term,  to  the  apparently  unimportant  or  merely  material 
ones  such  as  eating  or  v/alking,  are  all  dominated  by 
man's  final  end,  and  have  no  other  value  or  meaning 
except  in  so  far  as  they  enable  man  to  rise  to  God.  They 
are,  therefore,  endowed  with  a  moral  character,  or  at 
least  have  to  conform  to  a  moral  standard. 

Now,  in  creating  man,  God  might  have  attached  each 
individual  to  Himself  alone,  so  that  each  man  should 
attain  his  final  end  by  acts  of  a  purely  individual  char- 
acter, just  as  though  he  were  the  only  man  in  the  world. 
But  God  has  not  so  created  man.  He  has  so  formed 
human  society  that  men's  acts  have  not  merely  an 
individual,  but  a  social  character.  He  has  multipUed 
the  points  of  contact  between  the  individuals  that  form 
society.  He  has  surrounded  each  man  with  a  network 
of  multitudinous  influences  rights  and  duties.  He  has 
placed  between  Himself  and  each  individual  a  host  of 
others,  so  that  each  man  has  to  strive  to  God  by  acts 
that  affect  others. 

If,  then,  even  acts  which  do  not  affect  our  neighbour, 
are  dominated  by  moral  laws,  much  more  must  the 
activities  of  social  life  be  dominated  by  them.  The 
phenomena  of  economic  life  have  indeed  a  material 
aspect ;   they   can   be   expressed    in   terms  of   physical 


THE   CHURCH   AND   LABOUR.  9 

science,  but  they  are  made  up  of  human  and  not  of 
purely  physical  activities,  and  therefore  are  to  be 
governed  by  moral  laws,  and  therefore  fall  within  the 
authority  of  the  Church,  the  Divine  interpreter  of  that 
law. 

For  instance,  if  manual  labour  were  a  mere  pastime, 
not  affecting  anyone  but  the  workman,  it  would  btill  be 
susceptible  of  moral  attributes,  it  would  be  in  any 
given  case  either  right  or  wrong.  But  as  it  is  necessary 
for  the  well-being — for  the  very  existence  of  man,  and 
absorbs  a  great  part  of  the  energies  of  the  human  race, 
and  creates  myriads  of  relations  between  man  and  m9.n, 
it  necessarily  becomes  the  matter  of  multitudinous 
obhgations  and  rights,  and  the  Church  is  within  her 
sphere  when  she  defines  those  obhgations  and  rights. 

In  so  doing  the  Church  is  not  trenching  on  the  domain 
of  civil  society.  She  is  merely  declaring  with  authority 
the  solution  of  the  various  questions  involving  morahty 
or  rehgious  truth  which  the  constitution  or  the  develop- 
ment of  civil  society  presents  for  solution. 

This  is  the  prerogative  given  her  by 
God.      She    has    always    claimed    and 
Her  interference  exercised  it,  and    it  is  more  than  ever 
most  necessary  necessary  that  she  should  do  so  to-day. 
0-  ay-  jYie   fierce   struggle   which   convulses 

modern  society,  the  struggle  between 
wealth  obstinately  clinging  to  privilege,  and  poverty 
challenging  that  privilege  in  passionate  indignation,  has 
raised  questions  of  the  profoundest  moral  consequence, 
questions  affecting  the  lives  and  the  consciences  of  every 
individual  in  every  nation.  Liberahsm  on  the  one  hand 
and  Sociahsm  on  the  other  have  formulated  codes  of 
doctrine  which  are  completely  opposed  to  God's  law, 
and  which  the  Church  is  imperatively  called  on  to  con- 
demn and  combat. 

Liberahsm,    perhaps   the   more   dan- 
LlberallBm      gerous  of  the  two,  exaggerates  the  im- 
portance    of     individual     liberty.       It 
regards  man  as  in  the  first  place  naturally  good,  and  in 
the  second,  naturally  impelled  to  improve  his  circum- 


10  THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR. 

stances.  It  therefore  demands  full  liberty  for  him.  It 
expects  that  the  result  will  be  the  improvement  of  the 
individual  and  at  the  same  time  the  improvement  of 
society,  the  aggregate  of  individuals.  Its  general  ten- 
dency is  to  consider  each  man  as  a  being  apart  from 
others,  detaching  him  from  his  social  hfe  and  abstract- 
ing from  his  social  relations. 

Against  this  the  Church  teaches  that 

condemned  by    such    hberty    is    utterly    subversive    of 

the  Church,      human  society,  that  it  leads  to  anarchy. 

She  teaches  that  man  has  duties,  natural 
and  essential  du*ties  to  his  neighbour ;  that  man  is  to 
attain  his  final  happiness  by  acts  which  have  an  effect 
on  those  surrounding  him  ;  that  these  acts  call  for  moral 
control,  and  that  this  moral  regulation  is  all  the  more 
necessary  as  man's  nature  is  vitiated  and  inclined  to 
evil.  She  teaches  that  man  is  called  on  to  fulfil  his 
numerous  obligations  as  a  member  of  the  various  natural 
and  necessary  societies  in  which  God  places  him,  the 
family,  the  city,  the  nation  ;  that  he  is  subject  to  the 
authority  which  directs  each  of  these  societies  to  its 
proper  good  ;  she  teaches  that  it  is  her  prerogative  to 
declare  men's  duties  to  each  other  in  these  societies, 
and  the  moral  relations  of  these  societies  one  to  the 
other.  Human  freedom  thus  hmited  by  social  obhga- 
tions  becomes  true  liberty. 

If     LiberaUsm     exaggerates     hberty, 
Socialism        SociaHsm  tends  to  destroy  it.    Socialism 

subordinates  the  individual  to  the  State, 
as  though  the  individual  were  made  for  the  State,  as 
though  the  State  were  not  rather  a  mere  system  planned 
for  the  good  of  the  individual. 

To  suit  the  working  of  the  Sociahst  State,  the  personal 
dignity  of  the  individual  human  being,  his  supernatural 
destiny,  his  essential  duties  to  God,  are  ignored ;  his 
rights  to  property  are  unduly  curtailed ;  all  his  legitimate 
hberties,  liberty  of  association,  liberty  of  conscience, 
liberty  of  choice  as  to  a  state  of  life,  liberty  of  education, 
are  restrained  beyond  due  measure  ;  the  functions  of 
the  family  are  interfered  with. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   LABOUR.  1 1 

The    Church    has    no    choice    but    to 
alio  condemned,  condemn  every  such  system  which  pro- 
poses to  ignore  or  destroy  the  institu- 
tions and  the  relations  which  God  ordained  as  essential 
to  every  form  of  society. 

The    Church,    then,    has    the      right 

and  the  duty  of  condemning  both  the 

The  power  of    parties  which  are  now  striving  for  the 

the  Church  to    j-^astery   of   the   world.     But    will   her 

cure  social  evilB.  .^^^^fg^g^^g    be    of    any    effect?      Has 

she  the  power  of  bringing  back  peace 
to  distracted  society  ? 

Well,  her  Popes  and  pastors  look  forward  to  the 
results  of  her  interference  with  an  exuberant  confidence  ; 
and  significant,  too,  is  the  fact  that  many  writers  who 
hate  and  reject  the  Church,  admit  the  mighty  influence 
she  has  in  the  world,  and  note  with  alarm  that  that  in- 
fluence hardly  ever  promised  to  be  so  powerful  as  it 
promises  to-day.  "It  is  certain,"  writes  one  of  them, 
"  that  the  Church  never  had  a  better  chance  of  estab- 
lishing her  sway  than  at  present."  "  The  danger  is  in- 
creasing," wrote  another  great  infidel  author  ;  "  Pope 
Leo  XIII.  is  preparing  a  crusade  which  another  Pope 
may  bring  to  triumph." 

Yes,  the  Church  undertakes  to  bring  back  order  into 
the  present  chaotic  state  of  society,  and  she  has  the 
power  to  do  so.  It  is  not  the  first  time  that  she  has  had 
to  grapple  with  the  labour  problem — and  the  labour 
problem  is  the  social  problem — and  has  solved  it. 

It  met  her  at   her  entrance  into   the 
world.     At  the  beginning  of  the  Chris- 
She  has  done  so  tian   era   all   labour   was   slave   labour, 
inthepast  when  L^l5Qyj.gj.g  ^gj-g  ^^^^   bought  and  sold 

Blavery.  ^^  dogs  or  horses,  and  were  the  absolute 
property  of  their  owners.  They  were 
treated  exactly  as  their  owners  thought  fit  to  treat 
them.  They  had  no  redress,  no  rights  of  any  kind. 
Their  very  children  were  not  their  own,  but  their 
masters'.  Think  of  the  result  of  such  a  system  on  the 
minds  and  characters  of  both  masters  and  slaves ;  on 


12  THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR. 

the  masters'  side  callousness,  cruelty,  luxury,  pride, 
idleness ;  on  the  side  of  the  slaves  spiritlessness, 
cowardice,  flattery,  falsehood,  hatred.  Such  was  the 
unpromising  state  of  society  when  the  Church  came  to 
reform  it ;  and  remember  that  slaves  far  outnumbered 
freemen,  and  that  to  deliver  them  was  to  work  a  greater 
revolution,  a  more  complete  subversal  of  the  constitution 
of  society  than  even  a  Sociahstic  revolution  would  be 
to-day.  Remember,  too,  how  weak  the  Church  was,  how 
apparently  unequal  to  the  task.  At  first  twelve  poor 
fishermen,  and  for  a  hundred  years  after,  only  a  small 
number  of  poor  and  despised  men,  mostly  slaves, 
"  weavers,  washermen,  illiterate  clowns,"  as  a  Roman 
writer  of  the  time  scornfully  calls  them.  Yet  the  Church 
little  by  httle  mitigated  the  awful  condition  of  the 
working  classes,  the  slaves,  and  finally  brought  about 
their  complete  emancipation. 

Such  a  gigantic  work  took  time,  but  in  time  the 
Church  gave  the  poor  labouring  slave  his  wife,  his  chil- 
dren, his  home.  She  gave  him  his  wages  to  be  his  own, 
she  gave  him  prosperity  and  content. 

What  means  did  she  use  to  thus  trans- 

The  means  she  form  the  world  ?  Only  the  peaceful 
employed.  means  taught  her  by  Christ.  She  made 
no  pompous  declarations  of  the  rights 
of  man.  She  did  not  summon  the  millions  of  suffering 
slaves  to  rise,  slaughter  their  terrified  owners,  and 
reduce  society  to  anarchy.  No  !  she  made  masters  feel 
that  they  were  not  superior  in  the  essential  dignity  of 
manhood  to  their  slaves,  and  she  made  slaves  feel  that 
they  were  not  inferior  in  the  essential  dignity  of  man- 
hood to  their  masters.  She  taught  them  both  ahke, 
masters  and  slaves,  that  they  were  members  of  one 
family,  that  of  Jesus  Christ ;  that  they  were,  both  alike, 
sent  into  the  world  for  one  purpose  only,  to  serve  God  ; 
that  by  performing  their  duties  to  each  other,  duties  of 
service  in  the  one  case,  duties  of  kindness  in  the  other, 
they  would  gain  the  same  eternal  reward  and  meet  in 
perfect  equahty  before  God.  The  idea  that  labour  is 
something  to  be  ashamed  of  could  not  Uve  in  the  Church 


THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR.  13 

founded  by  Christ  the  carpenter.  She  loved  the  poor 
slaves  with  a  special  love.  Many  of  her  children  in 
the  early  days  were  slaves.  She  entrusted  her  divine 
mysteries  to  their  hands  and  raised  one  of  them  to  be 
her  ruler,  Christ's  Vicar  on  earth.  When  she  had 
softened  and  humanised  the  relations  between  masters 
and  slaves  she  was  easily  able  to  persuade  those  who 
owned  slaves  to  hberate  them,  and  thus  httle  by  httle 
she  banished  slavery  from  the  world  without  shock  or 
violence. 

Thus  did  the  Church  solve  the  Labour  problem  as  it 
presented  itself  to  her  in  her  early  days.  In  the  feudal 
ages  it  presented  itself  again  under  another  form,  and 
again  she  solved  it. 

The  great  lords  and  barons  who  ruled 

th^  1  h  Europe   sought   to    oppress    the    towns 

nroblenfin'ttie  situated  within  their  territories.  To 
Middle  Ages  resist  their  unjurt  exactions  the  Church 
formed  the  trade  guilds.  These  were 
originally  religious  confraternities,  but  the  Church  re- 
organised them  for  the  protection  of  the  tradesmen.  Each 
guild  comprised  all  those  of  the  same  trade  within  the 
town,  and  formed  of  them  a  strongly  compacted  body 
held  together  by  religious  feeling  and  by  a  family  spirit. 
Each  guild  had  a  monopoly  of  its  trade  in  the  to\\ai,  and 
limited  competition  within  itself  by  minute  regulations  as 
to  wages  and  conditions  of  work.  Each  guild  reheved 
by  its  care  and  its  material  resources  any  of  its  members 
(and,  in  case  of  need,  the  families  of  any  of  its  members), 
who  were  afflicted  by  distress  of  any  kind,  sickness, 
bereavement,  old  age,  even  imprisonment. 

Thus,  while  the  Church  held  sway  in  Europe,  work 
was  held  in  high  esteem,  labourers  were  well  content, 
wages  were  good  and  constant,  excessive  toil  was  re- 
stricted, strikes  were  needless,  the  homes  of  the  poor 
united  and  happy,  that  social  monstrosity,  a  strong 
man  starving,  was  unknown ;  a  spirit  of  rehgion  and 
family  union  and  solidarity  secured  social  peace. 

In  time  the  Reformation,  with  its  offspring  the 
Liberal  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century,  spread  its 


14  THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR. 

fatal  errors.  A  false  spirit  of  liberty  arose  to  disrupt 
Christian  society.  The  guilds  lost  their  ancient  spirit 
and  strength,  and  had  in  Western  Europe  fallen  into 
decay  when  the  French  Revolution  finally  destroyed 
them. 

Again,    to-day     the    eternal    labour 

To-day  the  sad    problem  under  a  new  form  has  grown 

state  of  the      to  be  the  problem  of  the  world.    Again 

labouring        it  must  be  solved  if  the  world  is  to  be 

classes  at  peace. 

The  workman  is  not  now  a  slave.  He 
is  free  to  make  his  contract,  but  he  is  often  not  free 
from  hunger.  His  body  is  not  sold  in  the  market-place, 
but  his  hfe  and  strength  are  marketable  objects,  and 
their  price  may  be  run  down  to  a  starvation  rate.  He 
is  not  bound  by  any  bond  of  serfdom  to  work  for  any 
lord  or  noble,  but  he  is  bound  by  his  craving  for  hfe 
to  work  for  a  master  who  will  often  just  keep  him  from 
starving.  His  strength,  his  comfort,  his  hfe  are  crushed 
between  two  mill-stones — above,  competition  among 
employers  ;  below,  competition  with  machines.  Machines 
are  inanimate  workers,  slaves  of  steel  and  iron,  which 
replace  the  living  artisan  of  long  ago.  Those  who  tend 
them  have  harder  and  certainly  more  wearing  work 
than  the  tradesmen  of  past  ages  ;  and  though  they  may 
get  good  pay,  they  may  at  any  moment  be  thrown  out  of 
employment  by  the  commercial  crises  that  occur  so 
frequently.  They  have  no  feeling  of  security,  for,  if 
their  strength  fails  them,  any  Insurance  scheme  is  a  poor 
substitute  for  the  reliable  and  (above  all)  the  thoughtful 
and  sympathetic  support  which  the  tradesman  of  old 
could  look  for  from  his  guild.  If  their  strength  fails 
they  must  go  down  and  be  trampled  on  in  the  struggle 
of  life.  Worst  of  all,  our  modern  industrial  system, 
which  gives  the  fortunate  minority  of  labourers  work, 
though  precarious,  drives  the  helpless  majority  out 
of  work  altogether,  or  almost  altogether,  and  leaves 
them  in  the  street  to  starve  or  beg.  The  consequence  is 
that  vast  multitudes  of  men  and  women  are  not  merely 
poor,  but  destitute  ;  not  merely  afflicted  by  the  ordinary 


THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR.  I5 

sufferings  of  humanity,  but  are  doomed  to  the  yoke 
of  wretchedness  and  misery  all  their  lives,  a  yoke — to 
use  again  the  strong  expression  of  the  Pope — "  little 
better  than  slavery."  Their  brooding  anger  finds  expres- 
sion in  strikes,  riots,  inflammatory  speeches  and  a  revo- 
lutionary Press,  SociaHst  orators  and  writers  do  not 
create  this  discontent.  They  find  it  in  existence,  and 
existing  with  good  cause  too.  They  only  increase  it, 
inflame  it,  profit  by  it.  They  win  the  allegiance  of 
the  people  by  appealing  to  their  rightful  sense  of  injury 
and  to  their  passions  of  envy  and  vengefulness.  They 
rouse  them  to  a  fury  of  destructiveness  by  showing  them 
the  alluring  prospect  of  Socialistic  equahty  and  happiness. 
It  is  not  now  as  in  the  revolutionary 

epochs  of  1789  and  1848,  when  par- 
s  a  danger  ticular  thrones  or  particular  forms  of 
to  all  Society.  ,  , ,  ^     .^       i      xt        iu 

government  were  threatened.     Now   the 

discontent  of  the  masses  moves  them 
to  pull  down  the  whole  fabric  of  civihsed  society.  The 
peace  and  happiness  of  every  individual  is  threatened, 
the  sacred  shrine  of  his  family  hearth,  his  rights  to  his 
property,  his  rights  to  the  fruits  of  his  labour,  his  per- 
sonal freedom,  his  association  with  his  fellows,  in  fact 
all  the  energies  which  create  the  wealth  necessary  for 
the  poor  as  well  as  the  rich,  and  all  the  laws  which 
should  guard  social  harmony  and  prosperity. 

In    face    of    Socialism    the    modern 

The    State      State  is  practically  powerless.    Sociahsm 

^°^Mrest    °     ^^  ^^  ^^^^  more  than  it  is  a  party,  and 

Socialism        ^^^    modern    State    has    no  right,  and 

claims   no   right   to   combat  ideas.     It 

professes  to  guard  liberty  of  thought  and  speech.    How 

then  can  it  check  the  writings  and  speeches  of  SociaUsts  ? 

It  has  for  its  law  the  will  of  the  majority.    What  right 

has  the  majority  of  to-day  to  forbid  the  majority  of 

to-morrow  from  being  SociaHst  if  it  wishes  ? 

Even  if  the  State,  contrary  to  its  principles,  does 
ban  Socialistic  doctrines,  it  is  powerless  to  enforce  the 
ban.  Against  Anarchy  which  contradicts  the  idea  of 
the  State,  the  State  has  arms,  or  at  least  arguments. 


l6  THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR.  . 

Against  Socialism  which  merely  exaggerates  the  notion 
of  the  State,  and  seeks  to  extend  its  powers,  the  State 
finds  it  difficult  to  act.  As  a  proof  of  this,  remark  that 
Socialism  is  strongest  in  France  and  Germany — precisely 
the  two  countries  where  the  State,  a  Jacobin  republic 
in  the  one  case,  a  military  imperialism  in  the  other,  is 
most  despotic  and  centrahsed. 

No  !  there  is  only  one  power  on  earth 
The  Church  the   that  can  solve  this  social  problem — the 
only  hope  of     power  that  has  solved  it  more  than  once 
social  already.     The   Church   of  God,  Author 

regeneration,     of  all  society,  teaching  God's  law  with 
the  authority  of    God,  and  having  at 
her  command  the  resources  of  devotedness  and  enthu- 
siasm which  God's  service  and  God's  grace  can  inspire, 
is  the  only  hope  for  social  peace. 

In   the  dark  days  of  the  eighteenth 
Modern         and  nineteenth  centuries,  when  Liberal 
Catholic  social    philosophy  was  working  anew  the  en- 
reformers,       slavement    of    the    people,    the    Church 
alone   produced   writers   of   genius   and 
discernment,  such  as  dv,  Bonald,  Lamennais,  de  Maistre, 
who  warned  society  that  in  rejecting  Christian  justice 
and  charity  she  was  preparing  her  own  destruction. 

Some  thirty  or  forty  years  ago,  there 
Social  arose   all   over   the   Cathohc   world   an 

activity  of  extraordinary  movement  of  mind  and 
the  Church,  action.  Her  pastors,  such  as  Manning 
in  England,  Korum  and  Ketteler  in 
Germany.  Langenieux  and  Pie  in  France,  Gibbons  and 
Ireland  in  America,  and  a  brilliant  band  of  Catholic 
laymen  ^uch  as  de  Mun  and  de  la  Tour  du  Pin  in  France, 
Windthorst  in  Germany,  Decurtins  in  Switzerland, 
Vogelsang  in  Austria,  raised  their  voices  in  eloquent 
pleading  for  the  rights  of  the  poor,  and  proposed  mea- 
sures of  redress  which  sounded  Sociahstic  in  the  ears  of 
the  many  Catholics  who  at  that  time  had  forgotten  the 
true  social  doctrine  of  the  Church. 

All  over  the  Continent,  as  though  a  new  spirit  had 
been  breathed  into  the  Church,  multitudes  of  priests. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR.  I7 

and  especially  multitudes  of  lay  folk  of  all  ranks  and 
conditions  of  life,  nobles,  merchants,  artisans,  faithfulty 
following  the  Church's  spirit,  devoted  themselves  to  the 
cause  of  the  poor,  agitating  for  their  rights,  providing 
works  to  help  them,  and  binding  them  together  in  Unions. 
Then  these  thousands  of  earnest 
-,       1-    1    e    Christian  workers,  bishops,  priests,  and 

PoDeLeoXm     ^^^  ^°^^  ^^■^^  ^^  ■^^^■''"  ^  leader,  no  less  a 
leader  than  Christ's  Vicar  on  earth.  Pope 
Leo  XIII.,  who  in  that  year  wrote  his 
famous  Encyclical  Rerum  Novarum. 

The  whole  world  listened  to  the  voice 

Its  reception     of  the  man  who  spoke  as  the  Vicar  of 

by  the  world.  Christ,  the  founder  of  society.  His 
voice  was  listened  to  by  sovereigns,  by 
statesmen,  by  men  of  every  calling,  of  every  rank,  of 
every  degree  of  culture,  of  every  school  of  thought,  by 
those  outside  the  Church,  as  well  as  by  those  within, 
with  a  reverent  attention,  never  before  perhaps  accorded 
to  any  Pontifical  utterance. 

The  Anghcan  Bishop  of  Manchester  at  a  large  meeting 
declared,  "  The  Pope  has  put  his  finger  on  the  sore  spot 
of  the  social  system.  He  must  be  Hstened  to,  or  the 
world  will  have  to  expiate  its  negligence  by  fearful  pun- 
ishment." The  journal,  Vorwaerts,  the  principal  organ  of 
Socialism  in  Germany,  speaks  thus:  "The  Pope  has 
anticipated  the  Princes  and  the  Governments  of  civilised 
States,  and  he  has  solved  the  Social  problem."  "  Yes," 
it  of  course  adds,  "  as  far  as  it  is  possible  for  the  present 
powers  of  the  world  to  solve  it."  And  M.  Barres,  a 
French  writer,  a  freethinker,  says  :  "  Now  that  the  En- 
cycHcal  has  appeared,  I  cannot  imagine  how  there  can 
be  any  anti-clericals.  Let  some  years  elapse  to  allow 
old  quarrels  to  be  forgotten,  and  Democracy  will  never 
again  regard  a  priest  as  an  enemy." 

There  were,  indeed,  some  interested  people,  even 
among  Cathohcs,  and  some  timid  spirits,  who  were 
frightened  by  the  Encyclical.  They  would  have  had  no 
objection  to  the  poor  being  instructed  as  to  their  duties, 
but  they  did    not  like  that  the  Pope  should  speak  so 


l8  THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR. 

strongly  as  to  their  rights.  They  thought  it  a  dangerous 
thing  for  the  Pope  to  approve  many  of  the  demands  of 
the  poor,  even  though  he  condemned  Sociahsm — the  chief 
of  those  demands. 

But  the  Church  will  not  champion  any  abuse,  nor 
bind  herself  to  any  class.  She  speaks  in  the  name  of  no 
class  or  rather  of  all  classes.  Nay,  if,  in  the  struggle 
between  the  power  of  wealth  and  the  power  of  the  people, 
the  Church  had  to  intervene  as  a  champion  and  not 
as  a  mediator  it  is  not  to  the  side  of  wealth  that  the 
teaching  of  her  Gospel  or  the  traditions  of  her  history 
would  incline  her. 

To  high  and  low,  rich  and  poor,  with 
It  is  an        the  force  and  majesty  of  St.  Paul,  the 
expositioa       Pope  expounds  the  laws  of  social  right 
of  Catholic      and    Christian    charity.      He    treats    of 
social  doctrine    economic  questions,  of  wages,  of  work, 
of  association,  of  profits,  of  all  subjects 
which  now  impassion  society,  but  he  treats  of  them 
from  the  standpoint    of   Christ  who  cares  for  the  full 
and  complete  interests  of  man,  not  from  the  narrow 
standpoint  of    SociaUsts  and   Liberal  writers  who  both 
see  in  man  only  the  functions  of  producing  and  con- 
suming. 

Though  the  Encychcal  coming  from  the  Vicar  of 
Christ  will  never  be  found  in  error,  it  does  not  purport 
to  be  a  detailed  code  of  all  social  doctrine  nor  the  last 
word  to  be  said  upon  it.  As  regards  many  questions  it 
only  traces  general  directions  and  has  been  the  occasion 
or  rather  the  inspiration  of  new  and  more  minute  studies 
of  social  questions  among  Catholics. 

The     Encyclical     is,     however,     not 

and  it  is  an     merely  a  declaration  of  Christian  prin- 

appeal  for      ciple.    It  is  a  clarion  call  to  action.    It 

social  action     summons  the  whole  Church  to  resume 

on  the  part      the  social  functions  from  which  for  two 

of  ecclesiastics    centuries  she  has  been  kept  aloof.    It 

calls  on  her  to  be  once  more  the  refuge, 

the  champion,  the  teacher,  the  friend  of  all  who  need 

her  and  especially  of  the  suffering  poor. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR.  I9 

Since  the  Encyclical  the  Bishops  in  every  country 
by  their  pastoral  letters  and  Synodal  decrees  show 
themselves  more  than  ever  earnestly  interested  in  the 
social  conditions  of  the  countries  they  live  in.  In  most 
seminaries  special  courses  are  given  on  social  questions, 
and  special  priests  set  apart  to  study  them  more  deeply. 
Priests,  with  the  encouragement  of  their  Bishops, 
occupy  themselves  with  the  numerous  works  which  aim 
at  improving  and  transforming  the  present  conditions  of 
the  poorer  classes.  Such  works  are  not  now  considered 
in  any  country  on  the  Continent  as  unfit  objects  of 
priestly  zeal  and  energy. 

But   the   Catholic   clergy   is   not    the 

Cathohc   Church.      The   Church   is    the 

and  ot  layfolk.    ^^^^  ^^  ^jj  ^^^  faithful,  and  lay  folk 

are  her  members  not  less  than  priests. 
Christ  in  the  person  of  his  Vicar  calls  viponall  her  people, 
lay  people  no  less  than  priests,  to  take  part  in  this  glorious 
work. 

Nobly  has  his  call  been  answered. 
Results  of  this  Not  merely  organisations  for  the  pro- 
appeal,  tection  of  purely  rehgious  interests, 
such  as  leagues  for  the  defence  of  reh- 
gious education,  leagues  against  drunkenness  or  evil 
literature,  leagues  to  protect  young  girls  when  travelhng  ; 
nor  yet  many  charitable  institutions  such  as  are  gene- 
rally understood  by  that  name,  orphanages,  asylums, 
hospices,  night  refuges,  hospitals ;  but  social  works 
of  a  more  constructive  and  preventive  character,  such  as 
organisations  for  the  saving  of  infant  hfe,  for  the  care  of 
nursing  mothers,  creches,  housekeeping  schools  for 
girls,  technical  schools  for  boys  and  girls,  clubs  for  the 
education  and  moral  protection  of  the  young,  mutual 
societies  of  all  kinds,  co-operative  societies  of  con- 
sumption and  of  production,  loan  funds,  cheap  restau- 
rants and  cheap  dwellings  for  the  poor,  registry  offices, 
consumers'  leagues.  Trade  unions  especially  for  the 
protection  of  unskilled  labour  and  of  women  ;  clubs  for 
the  study  of  Cathohc  social  principles,  Cathohc  pam- 
phlets, reviews,  newspapers,  congresses — all  these  works 


20  THE  CHURCH  AND  LABOUR. 

and  scores  of  others  are  springing  up  in  splended  pro- 
fusion all  over  the  Continent,  and  are  increasing  daily  in 
strength  and  effectiveness,  founded  and  directed,  some 
of  them  by  lay  people,  many  of  them,  perhaps  even 
most  of  them,  by  priests. 

Thus  is  the  Catholic  Church,  obedient 
Nature  of  social  to   the   call  of   Christ's   Vicar,   striving 
work.  in  the  words  of  St.  Paul,  "  to  restore 

all  the  world  in  Christ,"  to  build  up  the 
shattered  fabric  of  Society  once  more  and  to  make  of  it 
a  fair  dwelUng  where  all  can  hve  and  serve  God  in  hap- 
piness, as  far  as  happiness  is  possible  in  this  passing 
world. 

Christ  calls  on  all  of  us  to  share  in  this  work,  and 
surely  we  should  not  hesitate  to  obey  Him.  It  is  a 
noble  work,  an  inspiring  work,  and  one  rich  in  the 
blessings  of  time  and  of  eternity.  It  is  a  work 
which  will  further  our  own  interests,  for  we  shall 
be  opposing  to  the  forces  that  seek  to  rob  us  of  our 
liberty,  our  property,  our  peace,  our  religion,  the  forces 
which  will  place  comfort  if  not  wealth,  and  the  possibihty 
of  virtuous  hfe  within  the  reach  of  us  all ;  it  is  a  work  in 
which  our  energies  cannot  be  wasted,  for  we  have  an 
infallible  guide  in  Christ's  Church ;  like  all  works  of 
charity  it  is  twice  blessed,  for  it  brings  consolation  to 
those  who  give  and  to  those  who  take,  and  w^hatever  it 
may  cost  us  in  thought,  in  time,  in  trouble  will  be 
rewarded  beyond  measure,  for  as  each  of  us  will  pass 
through  the  gates  of  death  he  will  find  Christ  welcoming 
him  on  the  threshold  of  Heaven  :  "  Come,  thou  blessed 
of  My  Father  ;  enter  into  the  Kingdom  prepared  for 
you  ;  I  was  hungry  and  you  gave  Me  to  eat,  I  was 
thirsty  and  you  gave  Me  to  drink  ;  I  was  naked  and  you 
covered  Me  ;  homeless  and  you  took  Me  in.  Amen,  I  say 
to  you  that  what  you  have  done  to  these  My  least 
brethren  you  have  done  to  Me."    Anien. 


«  THE  CHORCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN. " 

IF    all   the  world's  wealth   were  dis- 
tributed   to-day   in    equal    shares 
ineanality  ol  among  the  men  and  women  on  the 

men  earth,  in  a  month's    time  the    world 

would  be  again  divided  into  rich  and 
poor,  and  the  social  question  would  be  again  calling  for 
solution.  Men,  from  their  birth,  tend  to  be  unlike  and 
unequal.  If  we  reflect  how  men  differ  from  each  other  in 
physical  strength,  in  keenness  of  sense,  in  retentiveness 
of  memory,  in  power  of  intellect,  in  firmness  of  will,  in 
the  nature  and  strength  of  their  passions  and  dispositions, 
their  tastes  and  opinions,  we  can  easily  see  that  they  can 
never  be  kept  on  a  level.  One  will  rise,  another  sink ; 
one  will  strive,  another  despair ;  one  will  work,  another 
idle ;  the  strong  or  the  clever — that  is,  the  few — are 
certain  to  surpass  or  overbear  or  circumvent  their 
neighbours.  The  inequahty  of  men  and  their  passions 
cannot  be  legislated  or  arranged  out  of  existence. 

It  is  thus  no  new  thing  in  the  world's 
The  mnltitade  history  that  the  many  are  poor  and  the 
was  always      few  rich.     It  was  thus  in  every  nation 
poor  but  not    that  history  tells  of.     But  it  was  not 
always  destitute,  always  the  case  that   the   few  were  in 
luxury  and  the  many  in  destitution. 
It  was  not  so  in  our  country  when  we 
-*or  example,     had    our    own     civilisation.       Though 
in  old-time      slavery  existed  in  the  old  Irish  system, 
Ireland         as  everywhere  else  at  the  time,  it  was 
restrained  by  the  law,  and  the  slave 
never  seems  to  have  sunk  to  the  level  of  a  beast  of  burden 
as  elsewhere.     Neither  did  slave-labour  destroy  free- 
labour.     Labour  as  such  was  not  despised.     The  free- 
artisan,  if  he  was  very  skilled,  ranked  high  in  the  social 
scalp.     The  more  useful  classes  of  artisans  had  lands 

a 


22        THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN. 

assigned  to  them  for  their  support;  others  were  paid 
wages  fixed  by  law.  All  of  them  had  perfect  hberty  to 
form  corporations  within  the  tribe  for  the  defence  of 
their  interests.  The  Irish  system  rigidly  hmited  the 
powers  of  the  chieftains  and  of  the  rich,  and  guarded 
jealously  the  rights  and  welfare  of  the  poor.  This 
explains  why  the  Irish  chieftains  were  often  willing 
enough  to  give  up  their  position  as  chieftains  and  accept 
instead  the  less  restricted  status  of  feudal  lords  under 
the  English  Crown,  while  the  poor  clansmen  are  found 
clinging  desperately,  even  until  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  to  the  ancient  Irish  system. 

Neither  was  it  the  case  that  the  few 

and  in  the      were  in  luxury  and  the  many  in  desti- 

medieval  times,  tution  when  the  Church  held  sway  in  all 

European  society  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

Consider,  for  instance,  the  state  of  the  town  labourer 
of  those  days.  He  always  belonged  to  some  guild. 
When  young  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  master  and  was 
instructed  by  him  in  his  trade,  lodged,  fed  and  clothed 
by  him  as  one  of  his  own  children.  His  wages  were 
regulated  by  the  guild,  and  were  not  allowed  to  sink 
beneath  what  would  ensure  him  and  his  family  a  decent 
comfort.  His  master  was  not  goaded  on  to  oppress 
him  with  excessive  work  ;  for  the  competition  of  master- 
workmen  (employers  or  contractors,  as  we  should  say), 
was  itself  restricted.  If  any  of  them  undertook  a  contract 
on  terms  which  the  guild  as  a  whole  considered  injurious 
to  its  general  interests,  the  guild  cancelled  the  contract. 
Every  tradesman  had  in  his  guild  not  merely  a  society 
of  mutual  aid,  but  a  society  which  considered  it  a  reli- 
gious duty  to  take  care  of  all  its  members  and  of  their 
families.  Religion  so  animated  the  guilds  that  when 
reading  their  statutes  one  might  almost  imagine  that 
they  cared  for  nothing  but  their  souls'  welfare ;  yet  we 
know  that  they  practically  ruled  all  the  towns  of  Western 
Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  played  a  leading  part  in 
the  politics  of  the  time. 

Thus  the  labouring  man  in  the  ages  of  faith,  meeting 
his  fellows  constantly  at  the  rehgious  festivals  of  the 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN.  23 

guild  in  the  Church,  or  at  the  deliberations  of  the  guild 
in  the  guild-hall,  discussing  the  interests  of  the  guild 
as  a  whole,  or  the  affairs  of  those  of  its  members  who 
required  help,  felt  himself  a  member  of  a  larger  family, 
could  look  forward  with  security  to  a  comforted  and 
honoured  old  age,  and  knew  that  if  he  died  in  manhood, 
his  family  would  be  provided  for  by  his  brethren. 

These  guilds,  as  I  have  said,  lost  their  vigour  after 
the  Reformation,  and  died  away  in  most  places  in  the 
eighteenth  century. 

They  were,  however,  in  any  case,  doomed  to  disappear 
when  the  invention  of  steam-power  transformed  the 
vvhole  industrial  world. 

Our  modern  system  has  great  advan- 
Deplorable      tages ;    production   has   been   increased 
condition  of     a    hundred-fold,  means  of  communica- 
the    poor  in    tion  and  of  distribution  have  multiplied 
modern  days,     indefinitely,  capital  can  be  easily  mobi- 
hsed,  articles  of  consumption  have  been 
cheapened,  and  the  standard  of  hving  has  been  raised. 
But  at  what  a  cost !     A  complete  moral  and  social 
divorce  has  been  effected  between  employer  and  work- 
man.   The  real  employers  of  much  of  the  world's  labour 
are  shareholders  who  have  no  personal  bonds  of  interest 
with  their  employees,  and  care  only  for  a  large  dividend. 
When  employers  deal  directly  with  labourers  they  are 
inclined  to  consider  labour  as  a  purely  physical  force, 
their  only  concern  being  to  get  it  as  cheaply  as  possible. 
The  development  of  machinery  while  improving  the  con- 
dition— though    leaving    it    precarious    enough — of    a 
minority  of  labourers,   has   doomed  vast  numbers  of 
them  to  destitution.     It  is  said  that  within  the  past 
sixty  years  machines    have  increased    about  five-fold 
while  the  number  of  workers  has  not  even  doubled.    In 
all  countries  there  is  a  vast  proletariat  whose  condition 
is  admitted  by  all  thoughtful  men  to  be  deplorable, 
and,  as  Pope  Leo  says,  "  It  is  imperative  to  find  some 
remedy,  and  that  quickly,  for  the  misery  and  wretched- 
ness that  press  so  heavily  on  the  large  majority  of  the 
very  poor."    The  words  of  the  Sacred  Scripture,  "  Thou 


£4       THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN. 

Shalt  eat  thy  bread  in  the  sweat  of  thy  brow  "  have 
been  made  false  in  our  day,  for  many  thousands,  working 
as  no  human  being  should  have  to  work,  cannot  gain 
their  daily  bread  withal. 

It  is  with  a  view  to  remedying  this 

Pope  Leo  XIII.  scandal   that   Pope   Leo   in   his   Ency- 

declares  the     clical   on    labour   speaks    to   individual 

duties  of        employers,  and  lays   down   the   obhga- 

employers.      tions  which  he  upon  them  with  regard 

to   those  who   work   for  them.     "  The 

obligations  of  masters  are,"  he  says,  "  to  pay  a  just 

wage  to  their  men ;  not  to  injure  their  lawful  savings 

by  violence  or  fraud,  or  by  open  or  hidden  usury ;  to 

allow  them   freely  to  practise  their  religion ;   not  to 

expose  them  to  corrupting  allurements  or  to  the  danger 

of  scandal ;  not  to  entice  them  from  a  love  of  family  and 

from  careful  thrift ;  not  to  impose  on  them  work  unsuited 

to  their  age  or  sex." 

Notice  that  there  is  no  question  of  charity  here. 
Charity  cannot  replace  justice.  If  the  worker  does  not 
get  a  proper  wage  it  is  injustice,  and  injustice  calls  for 
justice,  not  for  charity.  A  wage  that  allows  a  worker  to 
starve  should  be  supplemented,  not  by  a  gift,  but  by 
an  increase  of  pay.  The  poor  man  does  not  ask  for  alms, 
but  for  work  and  wages,  and  who  will  say  that  his  sense 
of  personal  dignity  is  over-sensitive  or  his  demands 
extravagant  ? 

The  payment  of  a  just  wage  is  the  first  of  the  duties 

declared  by  the  Pope  to  rest  on  the  employer.     It  is 

also  the  most  important,  for  if  observed  it  will  ensure 

the  others.    The  payment  of  proper  wages  will,  more  than 

almost  anything  else,  lead  to  an  equitable  distribution 

of  wealth  among  men,  and  thus  bring  peace  to  the  world. 

Now,   it  is  to   be   feared   that   even 

Even  Catholic    Catholic     employers     have     sometimes 

"'"ftTI  ?se^°  ^°°^^  notions  as  to  their  obUgations  in 

^otions^of^      ^^^^    matter.      One    who    remonstrates 

their  duties-     ''"^^^^   ^^    employer    for   giving   a    poor 

wage,   may  get  some  such  answers  as 

the  following  :   (i)  "  The  money  I  give  and  the  work  I 


THE   CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN.  25 

get  for  it  are  two  purely  material  things.  They  have 
nothing  to  do  with  conscience  or  religion.  Business  is 
business.  Business  must  be  run  on  business  hnes  "  ;  or, 
(2)  "  My  money  is  mine  to  do  what  I  Hke  with  it.  No 
one  can  dictate  to  me  how  I  am  to  use  it " ;  or,  (3)  "  My 
workman's  labour  is  an  article  of  commerce ;  I  make  a 
bargain  with  him  for  it.  The  State  can  punish  me  if  I 
break  my  agreement,  but  beyond  that,  no  one  has  a 
right  to  interfere  ";  or,  (4)  "My  men  freely  consent  to 
work  at  my  price.  Why  should  I  give  them  more  ? 
They  do  not  ask  it  "  ;  or,  (5)  "  If  they  are  not  satisfied  with 
my  wages  let  them  go.  I  can  get  hundreds  dehghted 
to  take  their  places  " ;  or,  (6)  "  My  wages  are  plenty  for 
my  men  if  they  are  not  married.  Why  should  I  have  to 
support  their  famihes  ?  Their  families  don't  work  for 
me.  If  a  man  goes  and  burdens  himself  with  a  wife 
and  family,  it  is  his  own  look-out ;  I  need  not  pro- 
vide for  his  improvidence "  ;  or  (with  a  philanthropic 
pose),  (7)  "I  admit  my  wage  is  not  a  very  big  one. 
I  could  afford  to  give  more,  but  small  as  it  is,  it  is 
better  than  none.  If  I  did  not  keep  my  business  going 
my  men  would  probably  not  get  any  work  at  all. 
In  fact  I  am  doing  them  a  service  by  giving  them  even 
this  small  wage." 

Such  answers  may  be  thoroughly  business-Uke,  but 
they  are  thoroughly  unchristian.  They  may  have  the 
authority  of  clever  and  successful  and  wealthy  men 
behind  them,  but  they  have  not  the  authority  of  God 
behind  them.  They  are  used  in  thoughtlessness  by 
Catholics  who  do  not  reflect  on  the  false  principles  im- 
plied in  them.  They  are  merely  odd  ends  of  phrases 
picked  up  parrot-Hke  from  the  literature  and  speech 
of  the  modern  commercial  world. 

This  setting  up  of  business  principles 

These  notions    as  principles  of  morahty,  this  supplant- 

are  inspired     ing  of  the  laws  of  God  by  the  laws  of 

by  modern      book-keeping  is  the  result  of  the  econo- 

Liberalism.       mic    Liberalism  which    has    permeated 

and  has  been  rotting  the  whole  fabric 

of  our  society.    The  partisans  of  this  school  of  Liberahsm 


26        THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN. 

tend  to  deny  the  existence  of  moral  relations  in  the  labour 
contract.  They  hold  that  the  value  of  work  is  deter- 
mined exclusively  by  the  law  of  supply  and  demand. 
According  to  their  principles,  if  a  workman  through 
stress  of  competition  is  willing  to  accept  a  starvation 
wage,  the  employer  is  justified  in  giving  it.  No  one, 
they  say,  need  give  more  for  a  thing  than  its  price,  and 
the  price  of  that  man's  labour,  they  say,  is  reduced, 
just  as  the  price  of  any  article  which  becomes  too 
common  on  the  market,  or  which  people  do  not  par- 
ticularly want.  Each  one,  they  say,  is  free  to  work  at 
any  wage  he  chooses,  and  none  is  bound  to  pay 
anything  beyond  the  wage  which  he  can  get  a  man 
to  accept. 

The  principles  of  this  Liberal,  or,  as  it  is  called  in 
England,  "  Manchester  "  School,  lead  almost  inevitably 
to  what  is  known  as  "  the  iron  law  of  wages  " — that  is, 
that  wages  must  always  remain  in  or  about  what  is 
absolutely  necessary  for  the  mere  subsistence  of  the 
labouring  class.  According  to  this  theory,  wages 
cannot  remain  for  long  much  above  this  hne,  for 
employers,  rivalling  each  other  in  cheap  production, 
would  bring  them  down  to  the  line ;  they  cannot  keep 
below  this  hne  for  long,  because  if  the  labouring  class 
diminish  in  numbers  the  decrease  in  the  supply  of  labour 
will  make  its  price  rise  again. 

Now  no  Catholic  can  hold  this  brutal 

The  Church      view.    We  cannot  hire  a  horse's  strength 

condemns  these  without  hiring  the  horse,  nor  the  steam 

false  notions,  power  of  an  engine  without  the  engine, 
and  so  we  cannot  hire  the  labourer's 
energy  without  hiring  the  labourer  himself — a  human 
being.  To  have  regard,  in  a  labour  contract,  to  the 
body  of  a  man,  his  physical  strength  and  health,  his 
purely  individual  needs,  and  to  abstract  from  all  that 
is  implied  in  the  fact  of  his  being  a  rational  free  and 
social  individual,  is  to  treat  the  labourer  as  a  mere 
animal — not  as  a  man. 

The  Cathohc  cannot  so  treat  his  workman.  He 
must    remember    that    his    workman     is    his     fellow- 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN.  2", 

creature,  with   feelings  passions  and  weaknesses  just 
as  he,  with  hke  interests  and  responsi- 
The  Catholic     bihties,    joys   and   sorrows,   hopes   and 
view  of  the     disappointments,    pleasures    and    pains. 
b^ef  *°°^        Moreover,     he    must     remember    that 
the  employer    ^^th  he  and  his  workmen  are  children 
and  his  hands.    °^    ^^    same     Heavenly  Father,    that 
they  are    both  Christians,  that   is,  im- 
itators of  Christ,  that  they  are  doing  the  same  work  on 
earth,  the  service  of  God,  and  look  for  the  same  reward 
in  Heaven. 

He  will  have  to  remember  the  words  of  God  in 
Deuteronomy :  "  Thou  shalt  pay  the  labourer  the  price 
of  his  labour  the  same  day  before  the  going  down  of  the 
sun,  because  he  is  poor  and  with  it  maintaineth  his 
hfe,  lest  he  cry  out  against  thee  to  the  Lord,  and  it  be 
reputed  to  thee  as  a  sin,"  and  the  words  of  Ecclesias- 
ticus  :  "  He  that  defraudeth  the  poor  is  a  man  of  blood. 
He  that  taketh  away  the  bread  earned  by  sweat  is  Hke 
unto  him  who  killeth  his  neighbour,"  and  St.  Paul's 
words,  "  Masters,  do  to  your  servants  that  which  is  just 
and  equal,  knowing  that  you  too  have  a  Master  in 
Heaven." 

Every  Catholic   must  hear   the   law 

Pope  Leo  XDI.   of  God  spoken  to  him  by  God's  Church, 

declares  and     and  that  law  as  regards  this  matter  of 

proves  the      wages  has  been,  not  of  course  changed, 

pSra       ^^^  declared  to  him  more  explicitly,  and 

fair  wage.       urged  more  insistently  on  him  by  the 

great  Papal  Encychcal  of  1891.     The 

following  is  the  passage  in  it  on  this  matter  of  a  just 

wage  :  "  A  man's  labour  has  two  characteristics.    First, 

it  is  personal,    inasmuch    as    the  exertion  of  strength 

belongs  to  the  individual  who  puts  it  forth.    Secondly, 

it  is  necessary,  for,  without  the  result  of  labour  a  man 

cannot  live,  and  self-preservation  is  a  law  of  Nature. 

Now,  if  labour  be   considered  in  so  far  as  it  is  personal, 

it  would  be  within  the  labourer's  right  to  accept  any 

wage  whatever ;  for,  just  as  he  is  free  to  work  or  not, 

he  is  free  to  accept  a  small  wage,  or  no  wage  at  all. 


25        THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN. 

However,  the  workman's  labour  is  not  merely  his  per- 
sonal attribute,  but  it  is  necessary,  and  this  makes  all 
the  difference.  The  preservation  of  life  is  the  bounden 
duty  of  all.  It  follows  that  each  has  a  right  to  procure 
what  is  required  to  live,  and  the  poor  can  procure  it  in 
no  other  way  than  by  work  and  wages."  And  then, 
"  Though  workmen  and  employers  should,  as  a  rule, 
agree  freely  as  to  wages,  there  is  a  dictate  of  natural 
justice  more  imperious  and  more  ancient  than  any 
labour  contract,  namely,  that  wages  should  be  sufficient 
to  support  a  frugal  and  well-behaved  man.  [In  another 
place  he  speaks  of  this  as  a  wage  that  will  ensure  "  a 
frugal  comfort."]  If  through  necessity  or  fear  of  a 
worse  evil  the  workman  accepts  harder  conditions 
because  the  employer  will  give  him  no  better,  he  is  the 
victim  of  force  and  injustice." 

These  words  are  perfectly  plain.  An  employer  is  not 
justified  in  treating  his  workmen's  labour  as  a  market- 
able commodity,  the  price  of  which  can  be  indefinitely 
reduced  by  the  law  of  supply  and  demand. 

It  is  strange  that  here  in  Ireland  anyone  should  claim 
to  settle  his  wages  by  competition  alone.  Most  of  us 
remember  our  country  convulsed  in  a  civil  war  when 
the  tenants,  backed  by  almost  the  whole  nation,  rose  up 
in  protest  against  the  claims  of  many  landlords  to  get 
as  much  money  for  the  use  of  their  land  as  unrestrained 
competition  would  give  them.  Just  as  the  rack-rent, 
to  which  the  peasant  in  despair  had  to  consent,  was  an 
act  of  extortion,  so  to  offer  a  sweating  wage  to  the 
labourer,  who  has  no  choice  but  to  accept  it,  is  an  act 
of  injustice. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Pope  refers  to  an 
Explanation  of  ordinary  unskilled   workman.      It   sup- 
some  points     poses  normal  conditions,  namely,  that 
in  this         the  workman  be  an  adult  man  of  ordi- 
declaration.     nary  strength,  and  that  he  put  forth 
average    energy    during    an    ordinary 
working  day.    If  he  were  unrehable,  or  a  bungler,  or  of 
less   than   ordinary   strength,   an   employer  might,   of 
course,  offer  him  less  than  the  hving  wage.    He  should. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN.        29 

however,  give  him  that  proportion  of  it  which  his  work 
bears  to  that  of  an  average  man.  Moreover,  the  labourer 
is  supposed  to  be  ordinarily  sober  and  thrifty.  The 
employer  need  not  pay  a  wage  sufficient  to  provide  for  the 
wants  of  the  shiftless  or  wasteful  or  drunken  workman  ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  he  must  not  assume  the  practice 
of  any  extraordinary  thrift  or  self-denial  or  the  supple- 
ment of  out-of-hours  work. 

These  points  being  clear,  the  doctrine 

Doctrine  of     of   the    EncycHcal    may   be   stated   as 

the  Encyclical,  follows:    An    average    workman,    even 

an    unskilled    one,    doing    an    average 

day's  work,  has  a  strict  right  in  justice  to  a  wage  which 

will  assure  him  a  decent  livelihood,  and  he  has  this  right 

even  though,  owing  to  the  number  of  the  unemployed 

ready  to  take  his  place,  he  would  be  willing  to  accept 

much  less. 

Justice,  as  you  know,  implies  an 
Explanation  equivalence  between  what  is  given  and 
and  proof  of  it.  what  is  received.  In  this  case  the  Pope 
claims  for  the  labourer's  work  an  in- 
trinsic value  based  not  merely  on  its  objective  element — 
the  product  of  the  work,  but  on  a  subjective  element  as 
well — namely,  the  personal  needs,  duties  and  natural 
rights  of  the  labourer.  A  wage,  therefore,  to  be  just, 
must  be  equal  to  this  intrinsic  value  of  the  work.  In 
other  words,  a  wage  to  be  just  must  give  the  workman 
at  least  that  state  of  comfort  which  is  ordinarily  neces- 
sary so  that  he  may  perform  his  duties  to  God  and  his 
neighbours.  Surely  this  doctrine  must  appear  reason- 
able. Every  man  has  a  right  in  justice  to  at  least  that 
amount  of  the  world's  goods  which  will  enable  him 
without  excessive  difficulty  to  attain  the  end  for  which 
God  placed  him  in  the  world,  namely,  to  serve  God 
and  to  fulfil  his  obhgations  to  those  about  him.  Now, 
a  man  cannot  without  excessive  difficulty  attain  this 
end  unless  he  gets  sufficient  to  enable  him  to  hve  in 
frugal,  decent  comfort.  Under  the  conditions  that 
exist  all  over  the  world  at  present  many  have  no  other 
means  of  enjoying  such  a  state  of  comfort  than  by 


30        THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN. 

working  for  wages.  Therefore  they  have  a  strict  right 
that  their  wages  should  be  at  least  sufficient  to  ensure 
them  this  moderate  comfort. 

Or,  to  put  it  in  another  way.  If  a  thing  has  been  given 
man  primarily  for  a  certain  end,  its  intrinsic  utihty,  its 
true  value  or  worth,  is  at  least  its  efficiency  for  the 
attaining  of  that  end.  Therefore  the  workman's  energy 
which  is  given  him  by  God  for  the  acquiring  of  at  least 
a  reasonable  state  of  comfort,  has  as  its  equivalent,  at 
least  the  amount  of  money  which  will  ensure  him  that 
comfort.  Consequently,  since  the  poorer  classes  have 
no  other  means,  in  the  present  conditions  of  the  world, 
of  obtaining  that  comfort  than  by  working  for  wages, 
every  man  has  a  strict  right  to  demand  as  the  equivalent 
of  his  labour  at  least  a  decent  living  wage. 

That  man's  strength  has  been  given  to  him  to  obtain 
at  least  a  reasonable  well-being  is  evident.  Without 
such  a  well-being  man  could  not  ordinarily  fulfil  his 
duties  to  God  and  his  neighbour.  God  would,  therefore, 
be  obliging  him  to  perform  those  duties  under  normally 
impossible  conditions — which  would  be  an  absurd  con- 
tention. 

The  Pope  gives  as  a  reason  why  the  workman  has  this 
strict  right  to  get  a  decent  wage  from  his  employer,  the 
fact  that  he  has  no  other  means  of  livelihood  than  work 
done  for  wages.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  right  to 
a  minimum  wage  comes  directly  from  man's  right  to 
live,  nor  even  from  a  positive  and  determinate  right  to 
work,  but  that  it  comes  from  the  natural  and  necessary 
character  of  the  labourer's  work  under  present-day 
conditions  which  leave  him  no  other  means  of  liveli- 
hood than  his  work.  Thus,  antecedently  to  the  wage 
contract,  a  labourer's  right  to  a  proper  wage  is  an  im- 
perfect and  indeterminate  right.  He  has  no  right  to 
go  to  any  particular  employer  and  demand  work  and 
proper  wage.  By  the  wage  contract  his  right  becomes 
determinate  and  complete,  and  imposes  on  the  employer 
a  strict  obligation  to  pay  the  full  equivalent  of  the  work, 
and  the  wage  contract  is  valid  only  when  such  an 
equivalent  is  agreed  to. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN.        3 1 

So  far  the  doctrine  of  the  Encyclical  is  quite  plain. 
A  workman  must  get  a  wage  sufficient  to  keep  him  in 
decent  comfort. 

But  what  is  "decent  comfort"?     Is 
Is  the  minimum  the  workman  to  be  considered  with  re- 
just  wage  a     gard  to  his  own  purely  personal  needs, 
"  family  wage  "  or  is  he  to  be  considered  in  his  normal 
or  an" individual  situation  as  the  head,  the  provider  of  a 
wage "  ?        family  ?     In  other  words,  at  least  an 
individual  hving  wage  is  certainly  pre- 
scribed as  obligatory  ;  but  does  the  Pope  go  further  and 
prescribe  a  "family  wage"  ? 

By  a  "  family  wage  "  is  meant  such  an 
™^     .  amount  of  money  or  money's  worth  as 

"famUywage"?^^^^  enable  a  workman— when  helped 
by  his  wife  working  in  such  a  way  as  not 
to  interfere  with  her  essential  duties 
of  motherhood  and  housekeeping — to  enjoy  a  decent  and 
healthy  home ;  to  buy  good  workday  and  holiday  clothes 
for  himself,  his  wife  and  children ;  to  supply  them  with 
good  food  in  plenty  ■  to  educate  his  children — an  average 
number  of  them — till  they  are  of  age  to  do  for  them- 
selves; to  enjoy  the  comforts  and  amusements  which  are 
usual  according  to  the  conditions  of  life  in  his  class ; 
and  to  lay  by  something  for  the  protection  of  him- 
self and  his  family  against  the  ordinary  accidents  of 
fortune. 

It  is  to  be  noted,  of  course,  that  one  and  the  same 
amount  of  money  might  in  one  place  enable  a  man  to 
Hve  in  content,  and  in  another  be  a  starvation  wage. 
The  purchasing  power  of  money  and  the  conventional 
necessities  of  life  will  differ  in  different  countries.  In 
fact,  within  the  same  country  they  will  be  different  in 
different  towns  and  in  different  districts,  and  they  will 
not  be  the  same  in  the  town  as  in  the  country  side 
adjoining  it.  It  would  be  evidently  impossible  to  give, 
with  a  view  to  general  guidance  any  more  exact  indica- 
tion of  the  amount  of  a  family  wage  than  I  have  given. 

As  I  have  said,  then,  the  question  arises,  is  this  family 
wage  obligatory  in  justice  ? 


52        THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN. 

The  answer  is  certain.    Catholic  autho- 

A  "family      rities  agree  on  this,  that  a  full  family 

wage  "  is  due  to  wage  is  due  to  the  labourer,  that  it  is 

the  workman    wrong,    and   may  be  grievously  wrong, 

but  It  is  not    ^Q    withhold    it,    and    that    it    is    due 

whether^  it      whether   the   labourer   be,   as    a    fact, 

is   due   in      married  or  not. 

commutative  There  are,  however,  Cathohc  autho- 
justice.  rities  who  hold  that  this  family  wage  is 
due  as  a  matter  of  "  social  justice  "  or 
"  legal  justice,"  not  as  a  matter  of  "  commutative  jus- 
tice." The  existence  of  this  opinion  has  the  practical 
consequence  that  when  such  a  wage  has  not  been  paid 
no  obligation  of  restitution  can  be  imposed  on  the 
employer. 

Furthermore,  this  "  family  wage  "  is  not 

"  Family  wage  "  necessarily  a  "  just  wage."  It  is  the  strict 

may  be  less    minimum,    below    which    an    employer 

than  a         may    not    go    without    injustice    when 

"  just  wage."    engaging  even  the  least  skilled  of  his 

hands.     He  may  be  obhged  in  justice 

to  give  far  more. 

The  Pope  teaches  us  this  when  he  points  to  the  per- 
sonal character  of  the  labourer's  work.  As  a  personal 
possession  his  strength,  hke  any  other  object  he  may 
possess,  they  be  made  the  matter  of  a  bargain.  He  may, 
therefore,  go  into  the  labour  market,  and  sell  his  labour 
at  as  high  a  price  as  it  will  fetch.  He  may  unite  with 
other  labourers  to  raise  that  price. 

Such  a  price,  regulated  by  the  laws  of  supply  and 
demand,  but  not  sinking  beneath  the  level  of  a  family 
wage,  becomes  the  just  price  of  labour.  Thus,  then, 
though  an  employer,  able  to  pay  a  family  wage,  cannot 
in  justice  offer  less,  he  may  be  bound,  in  justice,  to  give 
much  more.  He  cannot  give  to  even  the  least  skilful 
of  his  hands  less  than  will  enable  them  to  hve  with  their 
famiUes  in  reasonable  comfort,  but  he  is  bound  to  give 
his  skilled  hands  (his  carpenters,  masons,  and  clerks, 
for  instance,)  much  more ;  he  is  bound  to  give  them  the 
full  market  price  of  their  services. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN.        33 

In  the  light  of  this  teaching  we  see 

When  can  an    how   perverse  and  unchristian  are  the 

employer  plead  answers    which    I    have    supposed    the 

inabUity  to  pay  employer  to  make  when  trying  to  jus- 

this  just  wage  ?  tify  his  refusal  to  pay  a  proper  wage. 

But  I  like  to  think  that  such  heartless 
answers  would  not  often  be  given  here  in  Ireland,  where, 
thank  God,  the  pubHc  mind  is  aUve  to  the  obligations 
of  religion.  The  excuse  which  Catholic  employers  in 
Ireland  will  most  frequently  give  is  a  different  one. 

They  will  say,  "  I  know  that  my  wages  are  poor.  If 
I  could  give  better  I  should  be  dehghted  to  do  so,  but  I 
cannot." 
This  excuse  may  be  quite  sufficient  or  it  may  not. 
In  deciding  whether  such  an  excuse  is  sufficient  or 
not  in  a  particular  case,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Encyclical  is  stated  as  a  doctrine  of 
natural  law,  and  therefore  has  reference  only  to  ordinary 
and  normal  circumstances.  It  is  hable  to  modification 
in  extraordinary  circumstances. 

It  lays  this  obhgation  of  the  family  wage  on  an 
employer  only  when  the  general  state  of  the  trade  in 
which  he  is  engaged  renders  such  a  wage  possible.  I 
say  "  the  general  state  of  the  trade,"  because  the 
failure  of  a  particular  venture  on  which  an  employer 
embarks,  the  lessening  of  his  profits,  or  their  slow 
reahsation  are  not  reasons  which  justify  him  in  reducing 
his  wages  below  the  minimum  due  in  justice.  The  very 
notion  of  wages  implies  that  the  workman  is  not  his 
employer's  partner;  and  therefore,  just  as  he  has  no 
right  to  share  the  profits  which  his  employer's  extra- 
ordinary cleverness  or  good  luck  might  produce,  so  he 
cannot  be  made  to  suffer  losses  due  to  his  employer's 
bad  management  or  bad  luck. 

If,  however,  the  business  in  general  is  in  a  bad  condi- 
tion, owing  to  some  industrial  crisis,  or  owing  to  the 
abnormally  low  vitahty  of  the  commerce  of  the  country, 
so  that  employers  carry  on  at  a  loss  or  with  small  pro- 
fits, they  would  be  free  in  conscience  to  give  less  than 
the  minimum  family  wage ;  nay,  it  might  be  a  charity , 


34  THE   CHURCH  AND   THE  WORKMAN. 

for  them  to  give  a  less  wage  rather  than  send  their 
workmen  a-begging. 

When,  therefore,  a  man  says  that  he  cannot  pay  a 
family  wage  he  may  have  a  perfectly  legitimate  excuse. 
If  he  cannot  he  is  not  bound.  No  one  is  bound  to  do  the 
impossible. 

But  it  would  be  well  to  press  him  a  little,  so  as  to  find 
out  a  little  more  clearly  from  him  what  he  means  by 
saying  that  he  cannot. 

If  he  means  that  the  general  state  of  his  business  is 
so  bad  that  it  leaves  him  only  a  small  profit  on  his 
capital,  that  his  profits  just  enable  him  to  keep  in  the 
social  rank  in  which  he  is  established,  that  they  just 
supply  him,  when  hving  economically,  with  the  means  to 
house  and  clothe  and  educate  his  family  in  a  decent 
way,  conformable  to  the  state  of  life  he  has  come  to 
regard  as  his,  then  his  excuse  is  vahd. 

_    ,      ,.  A  moment's  consideration  will  show 

of  tMs  *^^  ^^^'^'^  ""^  ^^'^' 

The  absolute  necessities  of  life  of  any 

two  men  are  about  the  same,  food  to  eat  and  some  kind 
of  housing  and  clothes  to  protect  them  from  the  weather. 
But  there  are  other  things  which  are  called  (and  rightly 
called)  necessities — they  are  known  as  conventional 
necessities — and  these  differ  greatly  for  individuals 
according  to  their  different  positions  in  the  social  order. 
It  is  clear  that  the  employer  or  business  man,  owing 
to  his  up-bringing,  his  education,  his  habits  of  hfe, 
the  scale  of  expenditure  to  which  he  has  been  always 
accustomed,  or  to  which  he  has  grown  accustomed, 
comes  to  regard,  and  is  right  in  regarding,  as  necessary 
for  him  many  ^hings  beyond  the  means  of  bare  hvehhood. 
These  necessities  for  his  decent  hvehhood  will  include 
more  of  the  good  things  of  the  world  than  what  a 
working-man  would  consider  necessary  for  a  decent 
hvehhood  in  his  class.  If  such  men  were  deprived  of  this 
larger,  more  splendid,  more  comfortable  style  of  exist- 
ence, they  would  feel,  not  as  if  they  were  merely  dis- 
appointed in  ambition,  but  would  feel  themselves 
pinched  and   straitened  and   depressed   beneath   their 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN.        35 

normal  and  proper  standard  of  living,  just  as  the  labourer, 
who  does  not  get  a  family  wage,  feels  that  he  is  forced 
to  hve  below  his  proper  and  normal  state  of  decency 
and  comfort. 

Now,  both  the  employer  and  his  workman  have,  in 
the  abstract,  equal  rights  to  get  from  the  profits  of  the 
business  the  means  of  enjoying  a  proper  comfort,  each 
according  to  his  state  in  life ;  but  if  the  profits  of  the 
business  are  not  sufficient  to  satisfy  the  rights  of  both, 
the  employer  may,  of  these  two  rights,  each  equally  good, 
prefer  that  of  himself  to  that  of  his  workman.  He  is 
quite  justified  in  so  doing. 

Consequently  a  man  who,  owing  to  a  generally  bad 
state  of  trade,  sees  that  if  he  gives  a  family  wage  he 
may  have  to  give  up  business,  or  at  least  fall  from  his 
normal  position  in  the  world,  can  plead  with  truth  that 
he  cannot  give  it.  He  may  then  pay  a  smaller  one, 
though  of  course  he  is  bound  to  pay  as  much  of  the  full 
family  wage  as  he  can  afford  in  the  sense  I  have  explained. 
Owing  to  the  wretched  state  of  Irish 

This  plea  of     trade  it  often  happens  that  employers, 

inability  often    especially  those  in  a  small  way  of  busi- 

valid  ness,   can   quite   justly  plead  inabihty 

to  pay  a  family  wage.     It  sometimes, 

however,   happens   that   such  a  one  when   he  pleads 

inabihty,  really  means  something  very  different. 

He  may  say,  for  instance,  "  I  should 
like  to  pay  my  hands  better,  but  I 
but  often  invalid,  cannot.  My  first  duty  is  to  myself  and 
my  children.  I  wish  to  rise  out  of  the 
social  rank  in  which  I  am.  I  wish  to  get  on  in  the 
world  hke  my  neighbours  " ;  or  he  may  say,  "  I  am 
going  to  extend  my  business  and  open  out  new  lines, 
and  for  this  purpose  I  have  to  reduce  working  expenses, 
and  especially  my  wage  bill,  to  the  lowest,"  or  "  I  have 
some  profitable  investments  in  view  for  which  every 
penny  I  can  save  is  important.  I  cannot,  therefore,  pay 
my  hands  properly  yet." 

Such  excuses  are  quite  invalid  If  the  labourer  had 
to  wait  for  his  proper  wage  until  his  employer's  social 


36        THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN. 

ambitions  or  desire  of    wealth  were   fully   satisfied  he 
would  have  to  wait  for  ever. 

The  right  of  a  working-man  to  a  decent  Hvehhood  is 
a  higher  and  more  imperative  right  than  the  right  of 
his  employer  to  advance  his  family  in  the  social 
order. 

No  employer  can  defraud  his  labourers  of  their  just 
wage  in  order  to  lead  what  for  him  would  be  an  extra- 
vagant and  luxurious  style  of  hfe,  or  in  order  to  acquire 
capital  for  fresh  investments.  He  undoubtedly  has  the 
right  to  pursue  his  worldly  ambitions,  to  improve  his 
social  and  economic  condition,  to  raise  his  style  of 
living,  to  indulge  in  more  expensive  housing,  equipages 
and  amusements,  to  give  a  more  expensive  schooling 
to  his  children,  but  he  acquires  that  right  only  after 
he  has  acquitted  himself  of  his  obhgations  of  justice ; 
and  one  of  these  is  the  proper  remuneration  of  his 
employees ;  until  he  can  pay  them  a  family  wage  he  must 
limit  his  expenses  to  what  is  necessary  for  maintaining 
himself  and  his  family  in  decent  comfort  in  their  present 
station  in  Ufe. 

An  example  not  quite  parallel,  but 

An  example,  sufficiently  so,  will  help  to  bring  home 
the  reasonableness  of  this.  Let  us  sup- 
pose that  a  merchant  owes  a  large  sum  of  money.  His 
creditor  has  a  strict  right  in  justice  to  get  the  money 
and  presses  for  payment.  To  his  astonishment  the 
merchant  says  to  him,  "  I  am  very  sorry  to  disappoint 
you,  but  I  cannot  pay  you  at  present.  I  am  about  to 
extend  my  business  and  set  up  on  a  larger  scale.  After 
some  time  I  have  no  doubt  but  that  I  shall  be  able  to 
pay  you  more  easily  "  ;  or  perhaps  he  says  :  "  I  cannot 
pay  you  now.  I  am  saving  up  all  the  money  I  can  to 
invest  it  in  an  affair  that  has  been  recommended  to  me. 
When  I  shall  have  made  money  out  of  this  investment 
I  will  pay  you."  If  the  merchant  answered  thus  he 
would  doubtless  be  brought  into  court  and  forced  to 
pay  his  creditor,  and  quite  rightly  too.  Though  he  has 
■undoubtedly  the  right  to  pursue  his  ambitious  schemes, 
i^e  piust  pay  his  lawful  debts  first. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN.  37 

The  reason  why  it  has  been   neces- 
Why  the  Pope    ^^^Y  *o  speak  at  some  length   of  the 
speaks  chiefly    duties   of   employers,   especially   in    the 
of  employers'    matter  of  wages,  is  first,  that  the  Pope 
duties.         in  his  Encyclical  on  labour  has  thought 
it  necessary  to  dwell  at  length  on  this 
point ;  and,  secondly,  that  the  false  principles  of  Liberal- 
ism are  in  the  very  air  we  breathe,  and  infect  the  prin- 
ciples of  Catholics.    Catholic  employers  may,  therefore, 
be  doing  great  harm  to  society,  and  committing  great 
injustice,  and  yet  may  not  reaUse  or  even  advert  to  the 
harm  or  the  injustice. 

On  the  other  hand,  though  workmen  have  their 
grave  duties  to  their  employers,  and  though  they,  too, 
are  guilty  of  much  injustice,  it  has  not  been  thought 
necessary  to  dilate  upon  their  duties  or  their  crimes, 
because  this  occasion  is  one  on  which  instruction  rather 
than  exhortation  is  intended,  and  because  workmen, 
when  they  act  unjustly,  generally  know  perfectly  well 
that  they  are  doing  so. 

The  Pope,  when  instructing  the  world 

Duties  ol       on    this    labour    question,    lays    down 

workers.        very    shortly    the    obvious    and    clear 

duties  of  the  workman.     In  his  words 

they  are  "  to  perform  wholly  and  faithfully  the  work 

which  has   been   equitably  agreed  on ;   not   to  injure 

masters  in  their  property  or  persons  ;  to  abstain  from 

acts  of  violence  even  in  defence  of  their  rights  ;  and 

never  to  turn  their  demands  into  disturbance." 

Now,  workmen  in  Ireland  know  per- 
In  Ireland  few   fectly   well   these   plain   duties.     There 
workers  have    a.re    few    real    Socialists    among    Irish 
Socialistic"^      workmen.    There  are  some  who  imagine 
notions  of      themselves  Socialists,  but  who  have  no 
their  duties      correct    notion    of   what    Socialism   is. 
Some  call  themselves  Socialists  because 
their   sense   of   humanity   condemns   the   contrasts   of 
ostentatious  luxury  and  squahd  destitution  in  the  world 
about  them.    To  condemn  such  contrasts  is  not  Social- 
ism— God  condemns  them  and  His  Church  condemns 


38  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN. 

them.  Many  call  themselves  Sociahsts  because  they 
wish  for  certain  reforms  in  the  state  of  the  poor,  reforms 
which  the  Catholic  Church  is  more  anxious  for  than  any 
SociaUst.  Some  would  wish  the  State  or  Municipahties 
to  take  over  the  providing  of  many  things  of  common 
utihty,  cheap  houses  for  the  poor,  bread,  milk,  and 
some  other  things,  and  imagine  that  this  is  SociaHsm. 
Such  schemes  have  sometimes  succeeded  (notably  in 
the  hands  of  CathoHc  Municipahties,  as  that  of  Vienna), 
at  other  times  they  have  failed.  They  may  be  wise 
or  not  as  economic  projects,  but  assuredly  they  do  not 
constitute  Socialism. 

We  in  Ireland,  rich  or  poor,  have  no  real  leaning  to 
Sociahsm.  We  are  all  attached  to  the  principle  of 
ownership  ;  and  if  there  is  one  thing  more  than  another 
which  we  think  it  right  and  natural  to  own,  it  is  land, 
the  very  first  thing  which  Sociahsm  would  remove  from 
private  ownership.  The  Irish  workman  wants  to  have 
his  own  house,  his  own  piece  of  land,  if  possible ;  he 
wishes  for  full  authority  in  his  own  family,  he  chngs 
to  his  legitimate  hberties,  liberty  of  personal  action, 
liberty  to  practise  his  rehgion,  hberty  to  educate  his 
children  as  his  conscience  directs,  hberty  to  associate 
with  his  fellows  for  his  protection,  hberty  to  make 
bargains,  hberty  to  leave  his  httle  property  to  those 
he  wishes ;  and  he  has  no  objection  to  others,  richer  than 
himself,  possessing  the  same  rights  and  hberties.  He 
only  objects  to  others  using  their  wealth  to  injure  him, 
or  to  their  so  monopolising  the  wealth  of  the  world, 
as  to  deprive  him  of  his  proper  comfort,  and  in  all  this 
he  has  the  instincts  of  a  true  Catholic. 

No  !  the  Irish  working-classes  are  not  really  per- 
verted by  any  Sociahst  or  Anarchist  principles.  Of 
course  they  may,  and  often  do  go  astray  in  matters  of 
detail,  for  instance  with  regard  to  the  rights  or  wrongs 
of  a  particular  quarrel  with  employers,  or  of  a  par- 
ticular strike,  but  as  regards  general  principles,  they 
have  perfectly  correct  notions  of  their  duties  and 
rights. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKMAN.        3g 

Therefore  when  labourers  in  Ireland 

but  they  often    commit  injustice  they  commit  it  mostly 

act  unjustly      with  their  eyes  open  ;   at  least  if  their 

eyes  are  blinded,  it  is  by  passion,  and 

not  by  false  teaching. 

From  this  there  follow  two  consequences :  first,  that 
employers,  who — as  I  have  said,  often  through  thought- 
lessness or  ignorance — make  an  ill  use  of  their  power 
are  responsible  for  much  of  the  sin  and  injustice  on  the 
part  of  their  workmen,  and  thus  it  is  all  the  more  neces- 
sary to  teach  them  or  remind  them  of  their  duties ; 
secondly,  that  the  Church  is  called  on  to  condemn 
severely  the  workmen  for  the  crimes  against  justice 
which  they  commit  with  such  full  consciousness  of  their 
guilt. 

This  duty  she  has  never  shirked,  and 

and  the  Church   gj^g  ^^n  perform  this  duty  in   Ireland 

severely        with  the  more  freedom  and  outspoken- 

*^°the^m^^       ness  because  she  has  always  been — and 

the  Irish  poor  know  that  she  has  always 

been — their  protector  against  oppression. 

She,  therefore,  must  condemn  and  threaten,  with  all 

the  authority  that  God  gives  her,  the  workman  who  is 

deceitful,  envious,  vengeful.     She  must  condemn  the 

unscrupulous    demagogues    who    go    about    fomenting 

disturbance  and  rousing  the  working-class  to  evil  courses 

which  will  not  serve  their  true  interests  in  this  world, 

and  will  endanger  their  bodies  and  souls  in  the  next. 

She  must  condemn  the  labourers  who  in  receipt  of  fair 

wages  scamp  their  work,  or  waste  time,  or  will  not  work 

except  under   supervision,    or   injure    their  employers' 

machinery  or  materials,  or  make  unreasonable  demands, 

or  go  on  strike  needlessly  or  without  proper  warning,  or 

have  recourse  to  violence  in  striving  to  redress  their  rights. 

In  checking  the  evil  passions  of  the 

rh      h  •         working-class    the    Church   is    working 

actine*for^the    ^°^     ^^^^     regeneration     of    all   society, 

interests  of  all     ^^^  ^°^    least    for   the   welfare    of  the 

workers    themselves ;    for    surely    they 

will    more    easily    win     their    rights    if    they    claim 


40        THE  CHURCH  ANU  THE  WORKMAN. 

them  with  the  irresistible  voice  of  Unions — Unions 
which  are  strong,  firmly  knit,  based  on  solid  principles, 
conscious  of  a  just  cause  and  acting  with  a  deep  sense 
of  responsibiUty,  Unions  that  will  promise — and  get 
employers  to  believe  them  when  they  promise — that 
they  will  give  honest  work  for  fair  wages. 

The  wealth  of  the  world,  on  which 
Prosperity  ol  all  the  whole  human  race  has  to  subsist, 
classes  to  be     is  the  product  of  two  forces.  Labour  and 
sought  in       Capital.     Social  order  should  come  not 
the  practice  of    go  much  from  an  even  balance  of  these 
'"naitolall       *^°     powers     opposing     each    other — 
though  such  a  balance  is  necessary — as 
from  their  harmonious  working  together.     Each  per- 
forms a  necessary  function.     Each  is  indispensable  to 
the  other.    Neither  is  the  enemy  of  the  other  nor  yet 
its  servant.     Each  has  duties  to  the  other,  and    the 
prosperity  of  the  world  depends  on  the  discharge  of 
these  duties.    Such  is  the  ordinance  of  God  who  made 
society.    God,  in  the  words  of  St.  Paul  writing  to  the 
Ephesians,  speaks  to  both  of  these  great  parties.    He 
speaks  first  to  the  Christian  workmen  :  "  Be  obedient 
to  them  that  are  your  masters  in  the  simplicity  of  your 
hearts  as  to  Christ,  not  serving  to  the  eye  as  it  were 
pleasing  men,  but  as  the  servants  of  Christ,  doing  the 
will  of  God  from  the  heart  .  .  .  knowing  that  whatso- 
ever good  thing  any  man  shall  do,  the  same  shall  he 
receive  from  the  Lord  " ;  and  then  he  speaks  to  masters : 
"  And  you,  masters,  do  the  same  things  to  them,  for- 
bearing to  threaten,  knowing  that  the  Lord  both  of 
them  and  of  you  is  in  Heaven,  and  that  there  is  no 
respect  of  persons  with  Him." 


"  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING 
WOMAN." 

IN  hardly  any  respect  does  our  modern 
industrial     system     contrast    more 

of  sharply  or  more  unfavourably  with  the 

wage-earning  past  than  in  the  enormous  number  of 
women  to-day.  women  whom  it  forces  to  work  for  wages. 
In  most  countries  from  30  per  cent,  to 
40  per  cent,  of  the  total  number  of  women  have  to  work 
thus.  In  Ireland  if  we  reckon  those  who  work  in  fac- 
tories and  workshops,  those  who  work  for  hire  on  farms 
or  in  farm-houses,  those  who  work  in  their  homes  at  goods 
to  be  sold  in  shops,  household  servants,  those  engaged  as 
clerks  or  shop  assistants,  those  who  are  occupied  in 
teaching  or  in  the  pubUc  service,  there  cannot  be  less 
than  three-quarters  of  a  miUion  of  women  in  receipt 
of  wages. 

Clearly  therefore  the  question  of  women's  work,  its  con- 
ditions and  remuneration,  concerns  the  vital  interests 
of  societv. 

When  God  imposed  on  our  first  parents 

Law  0!  work     ^^^  j^^  ^^        j^  ^^  ^^^  merely  inflicted 

omversal      -^  ^,  tt        ■,  ■     ■, 

it  as  a  penance  on  the  race.  He  ordamed 

it  as  the  way  in  which  the  race  was  to  develop  and  fulfil 
the  objects  of  its  existence. 

but  different         Now,  as  there  is  a  difference  between 
in  its  the  functions  which  men  perform  and 

application  to    those  which  women  perform  in  the  de- 
men  and  women,  velopm  en  t  of   the  race  and  in  the  pro- 
moting of  its  welfare,  it  is  clear  that  the  law  of  work, 
though  it  binds  all  human  beings,  has  a  different  apphca- 
tion  to  men  and  to  women.     Hence  any  apphcation  of 
3 


42  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE   WORKING  WOMAN. 

that  law  of  work  which  would  be  incompatible  with 
women's  nature — for  instance,  the  imposing  on  women 
of  work  which  by  its  character  or  by  its  severity  would 
endanger  women's  social  functions — would  be  con- 
trary to  God's  ordinance  and  would  be  essentially 
wrong. 

Again  the  Creator  indicates  the  natural  and  normal 
spheres  of  man's  work  and  of  woman's  work  when  He 
said  to  the  man,  "Cursed  is  the  earth  in  thy  work.  With 
labour  and  toil  shall  it  bring  forth  bread  for  thee,"  and 
to  the  woman,  "  in  sorrow  and  pain  shalt  thou  bring  forth 
thy  children."  To  the  man  he  assigns  external  work, 
the  production  of  wealth;  to  the  woman,  motherhood 
and  its  consequences,  home  work  and  the  training  of  her 
children. 

Home  is  the         As    Pope     Leo    XIII.    declares — "A 

normal  sphere    woman   is   by  nature  suited   for  home 

of  woman's      work.     This  it  is  which  is  best  adapted 

work,  to  preserve  her  modesty  and  secure  the 

good  up-bringing  of  her  children  and  the  well-being  of 

the  family." 

The  home  is,  therefore,  the  normal  sphere  of  woman's 
activities,  but  it  does  not  follow  that  every  work  outside 
that  sphere  is  unjust.  She  is  often  called  on,  and  even 
bound,  to  work  outside  this,  her  normal  sphere. 

though  she  has  In  all  periods  of  the  world's  history 
^'always  to  some  there  have  been  certain  kinds  of  work 

extent  worked  which  women,  especially  unmarried 
outside  her  home,  women,  have  done  outside  their  own 
homes.  As  soon  as  slavery  disappeared  the  workwoman 
and  the  maidservant  appeared.  Even  in  the  heyday  of 
the  Christian  agec  there  were  women's  work-guilds, 
chiefly  for  the  making  of  linen  and  of  women's  clothes, 
and  in  all  ages  and  places  much  of  the  easier  kinds  of 
work  connected  with  agriculture  have  been  done  by 
women  working  for  wages. 

Moreover  the  growth  of  modern  in- 
and  especially    dustry  has  removed   from  beneath  the 

to-day  is  forced  fm^-ii]y  ^ooi  most  of  the  occupations  that 

0  do  so.        j,gp^  ^j^g  housewife  busy  in  days  gone 

by.     The  steam  loom  has  made  the  spindle  and  distaff 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  WOMAN.  43 

useless,   the  workshop  has  lessened   the  work    of    the 

needle,  factories  and  shops  have  ruined  the  old-time  art 

of  house-keeping.     The  home  now  tends  to  be  the  place 

where  one  merely  sleeps  and  eats,  not  the  place  where 

one  works.     The  poor  woman  and  the  rich  woman  alike 

procure  from  outside  the  things  which  of  old  they  used 

to  make  themselves,  but  the  poor  woman  has  to  go  forth 

to  gain  by  her  wages  the  means  of  procuring  those  things. 

What  she  used  to  make  in  her  house  she  now  makes  outside 

it,  or  she  makes  its  equivalent  in  her  wages.    She  has  not 

ceased  to  work.    She  has  only  changed  her  place  of  work. 

Also,  it  seems  as  if  the  necessities  of  life  require  womcH 

to  work  more  than  they  used  to  in  the  past.    It  is  true 

that  the  average  wages  of  men  have  risen  during  the 

19th  century  by  about  75  per  cent.,  while  in  the  same  time 

the  price  of  food  has  only  risen  by  about  40  per  cent., 

while  the  prices  of  most  manufactured  articles  have  gone 

down  to  half  of  what  they  were.     But,  on  the  other  hand, 

it  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  machine-made  goods  of 

to-day  are  not  as  durable  as  the  handmade  ones  of  the 

past,  that  the  price  of  lodging  seems  to  have  greatly 

increased,  that  unemployment  takes  from  the  nominal 

value  of  the  higher  wages  of  to-day,  and  (most  important 

of  all)  that  the  progress  of  the  world  has  created  many 

new  needs,  new  requirements  of  hygiene  and  food,  new 

amusements,    new    comforts,    the    absence    of    which, 

though  not  felt  as  a  grievance  by  those  of  two  or  three 

generations  ago,  would  be  an  intolerable  grievance  for 

even  the  poor  of  to-day. 

The  poor  woman  then  has  to  work. 
Such  work  is  j£  ^^le  has  no  one  to  support  her,  the  case 
often  her  duty.    -^  ^^^^^.^      j^  ^^^  -^  j^^rried,  she  is  her 

husband's  "  help,"  to  use  the  word  of  Genesis.  If  then 
her  husband  fail,  in  whole  or  in  part,  to  fulfil  his  natural 
function  of  the  provider,  she,  the  co-founder  of  the  house, 
the  partner,  on  whom  equally  with  her  husband  God 
lays  the  responsibiUty  of  the  family,  must  take  up  the 
task. 

Often,  too,  perhaps,  indeed,  most  often,  the  wife  even 
of  the  strong  workingman  is  forced  to  work  in  order  to 

3* 


44     THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN. 

supplement  her  husband's  wages.  This,  of  course,  simply 
means  that  men,  the  proper  providers  of  the  home, 
very  commonly  do  not  receive  a  family  wage.  If  they 
did  their  wives  could  confine  themselves  to  their  house- 
work; and,  as  a  fact,  where  such  a  family  wage  is  given, 
it  is  nearly  always  found  to  be  the  case  that  the  wife  does 
remain  at  home,  and  finds  abundant  occupation  in  her 
home  duties. 

This  consequence  of  our  social  progress,  the  going  forth 
of  the  woman  from  her  home  to  work,  is,  as  I  have  said, 
abnormal,  but  it  is  certainly  not  opposed  to  the  law  of 
work  as  applied  to  women. 
The  effects  of        It  may,  however,  be  opposed  to  it  in 
such  work      its   effects,   and,   alas!    often   is.       The 
are  often       inhuman    Liberahsm,  that  has   inspired 
ruinous         the  commercial  world  since  the  Industrial 
Revolution,  has  made  the  history  of  woman's  labour, 
especially  in  the  first  half  of  the   19th  century,  one  of 
the  darkest  and  most  disgraceful  pages  in  human  history. 
Public  humanity  has  insisted,  in  defiance  of  Liberalistic 
principles,  on  the  passing  of  many  laws  to  restrain  the 
abuses  practised  on  woman  workers,  but  even  yet  their 
condition  remains  more  than  an  abnormahty,  it  is  a 
social  heresy. 

Even  where  all  the  requirements  of  the  labour  laws 
are  conscientiously  observed,  where  precautions  are 
taken  against  imposing  on  women  work  unsuited  to 
them,  where  the  dangers  to  morality  health  and  sobriety 
are  guarded  against — and  I  am  confident  that  Cathohc 
employers  fulfil  their  obligations  in  this  matter — even 
then  there  still  remain  (it  cannot  be  denied)  certain  evils 
inherent  in  the  very  nature  of  the  factory  and  the  work- 
shop, evils  which  do  considerable  harm,  moral  and 
phvsical.  to  women  workers. 

especially  in         Then,  again,  the  solidity  of  the  family 

breaking  up      is  gravely  compromised  by  the  absence 

the  family.       of  the  woman,  and  especially  of  the  wife, 

from  the  home.    The  family  is  the  centre  of  every  man's 

life,  the  consolation  of  his  heart,  the  motive  force  of  his 

work,    the    fruitful   source   of   future   generations,    the 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN.     45 

pledge  for  the  continuance  and  prosperity  of  the  State. 
And  the  woman  is  even  more  than  the  man  the  very  soul 
of  the  family.  Remove  her  and  the  principle  of  unity 
of  the  home  is  broken,  individuals  will  suffer  and  dete- 
riorate, the  State  will  disentegrate  and  decay. 
Even  home-work  Modern  industry  not  merely  wrecks 
often  ruinous,  many  homes  by  driving  woman  forth 
"  Sweating  to  work.  It  has  managed  to  Wight  and 
system."  destroy  many  homes  even  while  leaving 
the  woman  in  them.  There  are  wealthy  men,  or  large 
companies  of  men,  owning  manufactories  or  large  shops 
who  get  much  work  done  by  women  working  in  their  own 
homes.  One  would  expect  that  in  all  fairness  such  women 
should  be  better  paid  than  if  they  were  working  in  a 
factory  or  workshop,  for  they  save  their  employers  heavy 
expenses  of  hghting  heating  rent  and  the  hygienic 
conditions  required  by  the  law.  Yet  such  poor  women 
are  the  very  slaves  and  drudges  of  the  modern  world. 
They  work  under  conditions  which  cannot  be  so  easily 
regulated  by  the  protective  agencies  of  the  State ;  they 
do  not  benefit  by  even  the  attenuated  bonds  of  human 
sympathy  that  unite  the  owner  of  a  factory  with  his 
hands  ;  they  are  less  able  to  unite  for  their  mutual 
protection  ;  they  are  the  first  to  suffer  by  having  their 
work  taken  from  them,  or  their  wages  cut  down  at  the 
sUghtest  depression  in  trade  ;  they  are  completely  at  the 
mercy  of  unscrupulous  employers. 

Thus  has  arisen  that  awful  "sweating  system"  which 
is  crying  to  Heaven  for  vengeance  on  our  society,  that 
hideous  exploitation  of  women,  with  its  cruel  killing  work, 
its  inhuman  hours,  its  hunger,  its  heart-breaking,  its 
despair,  its  diaboUcal  temptations,  its  slow  murder  of 
children  and  women. 

Shameful  exploitation  of  women  is 
Other  evil  one  result  of  economic  Liberalism  ;  there 
effects  ol       is  another  result  not  much  less  of  a  curse. 

.   J^°.!}         Wonian,   kept   from  her  proper  duties, 
industrialism      ,        t    j    i  ^  ivc    r  1    c    1    u 

«„  ,.,/.rv.a»       has  had  her   views  01  hte  talsined,  her 
on  wuiueu.  1  • ,  ■  ■     •  i  •       i  • 

ambitions    set    in    a    wrong    direction. 

In  pressing  women  into  the  rough  and  tumble  fight  for 


46     THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN. 

existence,  in  putting  before  her,  as  her  ideal,  the  modern 
virago  instead  of  the  gentle  maid  of  Nazareth,  in  setting 
her  up  not  as  a  help  but  as  a  rival  of  man,  the  modern 
world  is  working  its  ruin.  We  see  the  result.  The  children 
of  the  present  generation  have  not  the  respect  for  their 
parents,  nor  the  obedience  to  them  which  even  the  last 
generation  had.  We  are  alarmed  at  the  increasing 
frequency  of  divorce  and  at  the  increasing  contempt  for 
the  marriage  bond,  while  the  whole  state  of  our  society 
tends  directly  to  this.  Society  is  crumbhng,  collapsing 
because  the  bonds  of  charity  and  justice  and  family 
dutv  are  strained  and  loosening. 

The  Church's        It  is  the  work  of  the  Church  to-day,  as 
anxiety  for      of  old,  to  reform  society  so  that  all  may 

the  working  enjoy  a  state  of  Christian  contentment 
woman.  and  may  serve  God  in  peace ;  and  to  no 
part  of  that  work  does  she  apply  more  energy  and  earnest- 
ness than  to  the  reconstitution  of  family  life,  and 
to  the  saving  of  woman  from  the  dangers  that 
threaten  her  dignity  and  her  position  and  functions  in 
societj^ 

First,  the  Church  raises  her  voice  in 

The  Church     vvarning  to  individual    consciences.    She 

reminds        recalls  to  employers  their  solemn  duties  of 
ptnnlovprs  01 

their  duties  to  Justice  with  regard  to  the  women  who 
their  women  work  for  them  ;  she  threatens  with  God's 
workers,  eternal  anger  those  who  put  women  at 
work  unsuited  to  them,  those  who 
manage  their  factories  or  workshops  or  offices  or 
households  so  as  to  prejudice  the  morality  or  the 
health  of  their  women  workers  ;  she  recalls  to  the  minds 
of  shareholders  that  they  have  responsibiUties  with 
regard  to  those  poor  women  whom  they  have  never 
seen,  but  from  whose  labour  they  get  their  dividends. 
She  reminds  all  employers  of  women's  work,  shopkeepers, 
manufacturers,  owners  of  workshops,  managers  of  offices, 
mistresses  of  households,  everyone  who  directly  employs 
women,  or  who,  as  shareholders  in  companies,  appoint 
representatives  to  employ  them — she  reminds  all  such 
of  their  strict  obhgation  to  pay  a  decent  wage. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  WOMAN.  47 

and  especially        It  is  with  regard  to  this  last  point,  to 

of  their  duty     the  matter  of  wages,  that  Cathohc  em- 

to  pay  a  just    ployers,  as  well  as  others,  have  most  to 

wage.  reproach  themselves,  and  it  is  therefore 

nccessaiy  to   show  how  the  authoritative  word  of  the 

Church,  the  great  Encyclical  of  Pope  Leo  XIII.,  apphes 

to  women's  work  in  particular. 

An  individual        ^^  is  perfectly  certain  from  the  words 
living  wage  due  of  the  Encyclical  that  an  employer  is 

in  justice  to  bound  as  a  matter  of  strict  commutative 
the  woman  justice  to  pay  his  man-labourer  at  least 
worker.  an  individual  hving  wage,  that  is,  one 
that  will  supply  all  his  individual  and  personal  wants. 
It  is  also  certain  that  a  woman  worker  has  a  strict 
right  in  justice  to  a  similar  wage,  one  sufficient  for 
her  personal  and  individual  needs.  As  to  whether  a 
woman's  needs  are  less  than  those  of  a  man,  and  con- 
sequently as  to  whether  her  individual  living  wage 
may  be  lower  than  a  man's,  I  shall  say  a  word  after- 
wards. 

The  reasons  which  render  an  individual  living  wage 
obhgatory  are  identical  in  the  case  of  a  man  and  a  woman. 
Both  have,  when  poor,  no  other  means  of  livelihood 
than  wages  received  for  work.  Both  have  therefore  a 
strict  right  that  these  wages  should  be  enough  to  keep 
them  in  decent  and  proper  comfort. 
A  family  wage        As  I  said  last  day,  it  is  certain  (though 

not  so  due  not  from  the  Encyclical)  that  an  em- 
to  her.  ployer  is,  in  the  case  of  his  man-labourer, 
bound  to  pay  more  than  this  individual  wage,  that  he 
is  bound  to  pay  him  a  family  wage.  A  woman,  however, 
has  no  right  to  this  family  wage,  as  she  is  not  the  normal 
and  natural  provider  of  her  family. 

The  lowest  wage  therefore  which  an  employer  can  offer 
in  security  of  conscience  to  his  adult  woman  worker,  of 
average  strength,  even  quite  unskilled,  is  a  wage  that 
will  assure  her  decent  housing  and  clothes,  good  food, 
and  something  over  to  brighten  her  present  life  with 
some  joy,  and  her  future  with  some  hope.  The  law  of 
supply  and  demand  may  raise  the  just  price  of  her  work 


48     THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN. 

above  this  vital  minimum,  but  must  not  drive  it 
lower. 

Of  course  this  principle  of  humanity 

Employers  often  and  justice  is  denied  by  the  unscrupulous 

do  not  admit     employer — and  there  are  many  such — 

^  their  who  holds  himself  at  Uberty  to  pay  his 

obligation  to     women  any  wretched  wage  which  their 

•  ^^^-^^ ,       desperate    necessities   may   drive    them 

individual       ,-  „<-       tt  +    it.     •  i         r 

living  wage  to   '°  accept.      He  scouts  the  idea  of  any 

their  female     obligation  in  justice  as  it  would  deprive 

hands  him  of  the  commercial  advantages  which 

he  enjoys  in  dealing  with  his  women, 

advantages  much  greater  than   those  which  he  enjoys 

when  deahng  with  h^s  men. 

Women  are  more  at  their  emplo3'er's 

and  take       mercy  than  men.    They  are  more  resigned 

advantage  of     ^q  their  misery  than  men.     They  have, 

women  s        compared  with  men,  little  taste  or  talent 

+„  Z!L-?!v.i.«    for  agitation  and  organisation.       They 
to  exploit  them.  °        j-jjii         i.,- 

are  more  divided  by  class  distinctions. 

Tlicy  ciistrubi;  each  other  more.  More  generous  than  men 
in  every  other  respect,  in  this  they  are  more  self- 
centred. 

The}^  are  more  easily  cowed  by  bull5nng,  and  more 
frightened  by  fear  of  the  consequences  of  resistance.  They 
have  not  the  fighting  spirit  of  men.  Their  very  fidehty 
and  family  affection  often  increase  their  helplessness. 
If  they  have  a  little  sister  or  brother,  or  aged  parent 
or  sick  husband  to  support,  they  will  suffer  any  privation, 
put  up  with  any  wretched  pittance  rather  than  jeopardise 
the  interests  of  those  dear  to  them.  Besides,  many  of 
them  looking  on  work  as  a  temporarj^  necessity  from 
which  they  nope  to  be  freed  by  marriage,  do  not  go 
through  any  apprenticeship,  or  seriously  quahfy  them- 
selves by  technical  training  in  a  skilled  trade.  For  all 
these  reasons  they  are  almost  quite  unable  to  form 
Unions,  the  only  efficacious  defence  of  the  labouring 
classes  against  exploitation. 

No  wonder  then  that  women's  work  being  left  at  the 
mercy  of  economic  laws  is  wretchedly  remunerated,  and 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING   WOMAN.  49 

that  the  vast  majority  of  the  sweated  industries  are 

women's  industries. 

Theories  some-       There  are  some  principles  invoked  to 

,  times  advanced  defend    the    underpayment    of    women 

to  defend       against    the    charges    of    injustice    and 

underpayment    cruelty. 

(A)  womln's  ^^  ^^  °^^°^  ^^^^  ^°^  instance  that 
work T less  women's  work  is  not  equal  to  that  of 
valuable  than  ^^^  ^^^'^  ^^  therefore  to  be  less  well 
man's  work,     paid. 

The   axiom  ^°^^  ^^^  know  the  axiom  "  Equal  work 

"  Equal  pay     deserves    equal    pay."        The    accurate 
for  equal       meaning  of  it  is,  that  two  people  doing 
work  "         in  the  same  time  the  same  amount  of 
work  ni  an  equally   good  way  should  be  equally   re- 
munerated. 

Such  a  principle  appears  to  be  just.  It  is  appealed  to 
even  by  the  employers  of  sweated  labour.  Such  men, 
where  piecework  is  done  in  the  homes  of  the  workers, 
generally  give  exactly  the  same  price  for  an  article 
whether  made  by  a  man  or  a  woman.  Though  such  an 
employer  invokes  the  principle  because  it  suits  his  in- 
terests, and  though  the  wage  he  gives  to  both  men  and 
women  is  shamefully  unjust,  still  his  contention  that  he 
need  not  pay  the  man  more  than  the  woman  for  the 
same  work  seems  fair.  Or  again,  if  a  man  gets  3s.  for  a 
day's  work  why  should  a  woman  get  only  is.  for  the  same 
day's  work  done  equally  well  ? 

though  not  Yet  the  formula  "  Equal  wage  for  equal 

universally      work  "  just  and  fair  as  it  appears,  is  not 
true  to  be  taken  as  expressing  a  universal 

obiigauon  m  justice. 

You  will  easily  see  how  this  is  so.  The  minimum  living 
wage  must  be  paid  to  every  worker,  but  the  amount 
between  this  minimum  and  the  just  wage  varies,  and  is 
to  be  determined  by  the  higgling  of  the  market.  For 
instance,  both  an  unskilled  labourer  and  a  plumber  must 
get  their  minimum  wage  ;  but  the  just  wage  of  a  plumber 
is  raised  bj'-  the  circumstances  of  the  labour  market 
beyond  the  just  wage  of  the  unskilled  workman. 


50     THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN. 

Now,  in  the  same  wa)^  the  higghng  of  the  market 
may  run  up  the  rate  of  man's  wages  above  the  rate  of 
woman's  wages.  An  employer  is  bound  to  give  his  woman 
employee  at  least  a  hving  wage.  He  is  bound  to  pay  her 
what  may  be  more.  He  is  to  give  her  the  just  price  of 
her  labour,  but  the  higghng  of  the  market  may  leave 
this  just  price  of  woman's  labour  at  a  lower  point  than 
the  current  price  of  the  same  work  done  by  a  man. 
Consequently  in  the  numerous  occupations,  such  as 
those  of  siiop-assistants,  clerks,  servants,  teachers, 
where  it  may  happen  that  a  woman's  work  is  quite  equally 
effective  as  that  of  a  man,  and  yet  brings  in  a  wage  very 
inferior  to  that  of  a  man,  we  may  hold  that  the  woman's 
inferior  wage  is  not  necessarily  unjust.  Also,  if  an 
emploj^er  dismiss  a  man,  and  take  on  at  a  smaller 
wage  a  woman  who  can  do  the  work  equally  well, 
he  is  not  necessarily  to  be  condemned  off-hand  for 
injustice. 

He  may,  of  course,  be  compelling  the  woman  to 
undertake  work  unsuited  to  her  sex  or  strength,  or  the 
inferior  wage  given  her  may  be  less  than  the  just  wage, 
or  even  less  than  the  minimum  living  wage — ^in  all  which 
cases  he  will  be  committing  a  grave  sin  of  injustice — but 
there  will  not  be  any  injustice  in  the  mere  fact  of  his 
giving  her  a  smaller  wage  than  he  has  been  giving  the 
man  whom  she  replaces. 

Many  trades,  or  many  departments  of  certain  trades, 
which  were  once  in  the  hands  of  men,  have  passed  into 
women's  hands  owing  to  the  wilhngness  of  women  to 
accept  lower  wages  than  men  would  put  up  with.  In 
some  of  these  cases  the  work  is  unsuited  to  women, 
and  the  employers  who  so  transferred  the  work  from 
men  to  women  acted  unjustly.  In  other  cases  the  work 
is  not  unsuited  to  women,  and  the  employers  in  thus 
replacing  men  by  women  are  not  guilty  of  any  injustice 
if  they  pay  their  women  a  proper  wage.  It  is  to  be 
feared,  however,  that  such  replacing  ofmen's  labour  by 
women's  labour  has  generally  taken  place  simply  because 
women  could  be  got  to  work  at  a  wage  below  the  limit 
of  justice,  a  wage  that  men  would  not  accept. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING   WOMAN.  5I 

As  a  general  rule  however,  the  work  in  which  men 
are  engaged  and  the  work  in  which  women  are  engaged 
are  quite  distinct  from  each  other,  and  so  different  in 
character  that  employers  can  generally  deny  that  they 
remunerate  work  differently  according  to  the  sex  of  the 
worker. 

I  have  said  that  the  principle  of  equal 

is  in  general    pg^y  fQj-  equal  work  is  not  one  of  universal 

a  principle      application.     Still  it  is  in  the  main   a 

0    ]us  ice       principle  of  justice  and  fair  play.     If  it 

could  be  impressed  on  the  public  conscience  as  a  rough 

working  rule  it  would  do  much  to  check  the  shameful 

exploitation  of  woman's  labour,  and  it  would  put  some 

restraint  on  the  very  widespread  abuse  of  paying  even 

highly-skilled  women  less  than  quite  unskilled  men. 

A  corollary  of  this  principle  is  that, 
(as  is  also  a  where  two  workers,  or  two  classes  of 
corollary  of  it)  workers,  contribute  by  different  opera- 
tions to  the  production  of  an  article,  the 
relation  between  their  wages  should  be  roughly  equal 
to  the  relation  between  their  shares  in  the  production 
of  the  article.  Such  a  principle  would  be,  of  course, 
generally  unworkable  as  a  practical  guide,  for  the  import- 
ance of  the  co-operation  of  any  Worker  or  set  of  workers 
is  generally  impossible  to  estimate ;  still  it  would 
be  easy  to  show  that  this  principle  of  fair-play  is  flagrantly 
violated  in  many  industries.  It  is  often  the  case  that 
women  perform  all  the  important  and  laborious  processes 
in  the  production  of  certain  goods,  and  that  men  per- 
forming some  quite  subsidiary  and  easy  process,  carry 
off  the  Hon's  share  of  the  wages. 

A  woman's         The  principle  of  equal  pay  for  equal 

work  is  often     work  would  be,  I  say,  a  rough  criterion 

less  valuable     as  to  the  observance  of  justice  in  the 

than  a  man's,    payment  of  wages. 

Fur  mstance,  in  the  case  of  unskilled  work,  though 

a  man  has  a  right  to  a  family  wage  and  a  woman  a  right 

only  to  a  personal  living  wage,  the  relation  between  these 

two  wages  probably  would  roughly  represent  the  relation 

between  the  quantity  of  work  done  by  each.    Not  merely, 


52     THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN. 

however,  in  those  kinds  of  labour  which  demand  physical 
strength,  but  in  those  which  merely  call  for  accuracy, 
sureness  of  touch,  despatch,  and  even  in  occupations 
such  as  the  tending  of  a  shop  or  the  keeping  of  accounts, 
it  is  found  by  experience  that  a  man's  labour  is  generally 
(though  by  no  means  always)  superior  in  various  respects 
to  that  of  a  woman.  The  difference  between  their  wages 
may  sometimes  roughly  represent  their  comparative 
efficiency,  though  it  is  unfortunately  quite  certain  that 
far  more  often  it  is  due  merely  to  the  greater  ease  with 
which  women's  labour  can  be  exploited. 
(B)  "A  woman's     A  second  theory — which  we  may  call 

wage  is  only  a   "  the  theory  of  supplementary  wages  " — 

supplementary   is  often  advanced  by  employers  to  de- 
wage."         fend  themselves    from    the    charge    of 
cruelty  or  injustice.    The  theory  is  this,  that  a  woman's 
wage  need  not  be  big  because  it  is  only  a  supplement  of 
her  husband's  or  her  father's  wage. 

Some  carry  this  theory  very  far.  The  daughter,  they 
say,  hves  on  her  father's  wages,  the  wife  on  her  husband's, 
and  if  either  of  them  take  it  into  her  head  to  work,  it 
is  not  through  necessity,  but  in  order  to  get  pocket-money 
or  to  indulge  in  superfluous  pleasures. 

If  such  were  the  case,  namely,  that  a  woman  works 
merely  to  obtain  superfluous  luxuries,  it  would  undoubt- 
edly follow  that  no  injustice  would  be  done  in  remunerat- 
ing such  work  by  a  diminutive  salary.  To  use  the  words 
of  the  Pope,  her  work  would  be  merely  "  personal  "  and 
therefore  it  "  would  be  within  the  labourer's  right 
to  accept  any  rate  of  wages  whatsoever,"  and  it  would 
be  within  the  employer's  right  to  haggle  over  the  rate  of 
her  wages  as  he  would  haggle  over  the  price  of  an 
article  in  a  shop. 

This  is  Undoubtedly,  too,  it  does  happen  some- 

sometimes      times  that  a  young  woman  takes  a  posi- 
true  tion  as  a  shop  assistant  or  a  clerk  simply 

in  oraer  lo  provide  herself  with  pocket-money.  Also  a 
young  woman  who  is  easily  supported  by  her  father  may 
take  up  lace-making  or  some  industry  of  the  kind  to 
enrich  her  wardrobe,  or  to  have  more  money  to  spend 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE    WORKING    WOMAN.  53 

in  amusing  herself.  Indeed  this  is  (in  some  places  at 
least)  common  enough  among  the  daughters  of  well-to-do 
people,  and  even  of  people  in  a  higher  station  of  hfc. 
They  sell  their  work  cheap,  and  are  too  "grand"  to 
haggle  over  its  price,  forgetting  in  their  selfishness  or 
thoughtlessness  that,  few  as  they  are,  they  are  doing  a 
real  injury  to  their  less  fortunate  sisters  by  depressing 
the  price  of  such  work.  It  sometimes  happens  that  a 
workingman's  wife  when  her  household  work  is  over 
may  do  a  little  work  to  enrich  the  household  stock, 
though  she  stand  in  no  need  of  doing  so. 

Such  "  amateur  "  workers  may  be  indeed,  absolutely 
speaking,  fairly  numerous,  but  compared  to  the  countless 
multitudes  who  work  through  dire  necessity,  they  are  a 
mere  handful.  To  imagine  that  the  womankind  of  the 
wage-earning  classes  do  work  as  a  dilettante  occupation 
is  to  deliberately  shut  one's  eyes  to  the  realities  of  the 
world  about  one. 

There  are  other  employers  who  do  not  push  this 
theory]  quite  so  far.  They  admit  that  women  have  to 
work  through  necessity,  but  they  say  that,  as  their 
fathers  or  husbands  are  earning  wages — insufficient  but 
still  wages — a  small  wage,  earned  by  the  daughter  or  the 
wife,  will  bring  up  the  family  budget  to  what  is  enough 
for  the  comfort  of  the  family,  and  that,  therefore,  a  small 
wage  is  not  an  unjust  one  in  the  case  of  women. 

but  geoprally  ^^  ^^'  °^  course,  far  from  being  the  case 
iaise  and  that  every  woman  has  cither  a  husband 
cannot  be       or   a    father   working   to    support   her. 

acted  on  by  Many  have  neither  the  one  nor  the 
employer.  other,  but  even  in  the  case  of  those  who 
have  ilie  une  or  the  other  this  plea  of  the  employer  will 
not  avail  him. 

When  a  married  woman  works  for  an  employer,  her 
employer  is  bound,  as  a  matter  of  justice,  to  give  her, 
not  wiiat  will  bring  her  husband's  wage  up  to  the  level 
of  a  family  wage — her  husband's  wage  is  no  concern 
of  her  employer — but  what  would  keep  her,  even  if  un- 
married, in  decent  comfort.  The  fact  that  she  has  a 
husband  has  nothing  to  do  with  her  employer.     What 


54     THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN. 

he  has  to  remember  is  this,  that  she  gives  him  her  work, 
that  she  has  a  right  in  strict  justice  to  get  from  him  the 
value  of  it,  and  that  that  value,  as  we  have  seen,  is  her 
individual  living  wage. 

With  regard  to  the  grown  girl  who  lives  in  her  father's 
house,  the  case  is  stronger  still.  If  her  father  partly 
supports  her  it  is  more  than  he  is  bound  in  justice  to  do. 
The  family  wage,  to  which  I  have  shown  that  her  father 
is  entitled,  is  only  what  will  enable  him  to  bring  up  his 
children  till  they  are  of  age  to  work  for  themselves.  No 
one  ever  dreamt  that  it  should  be  sufficient  to  support 
a  family  of  girls  indefinitely,  or  until  they  get  married  ; 
and  the  employer  if  it  were  a  question  of  paying  the  girl's 
father  vrould  be  first  to  scout  such  a  ridiculous  idea. 

You  see  how  contradictory  is  the  position  which  som.e 
employers  adopt.  On  the  one  hand,  they  say  they  need 
not  give  an)'thing  to  their  man-labourer  beyond  his 
personal  wage,  that  they  need  not  give  him  anything 
for  the  support  of  his  family.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
asked  to  pay  a  member  of  his  family  they  say  they  have 
already  paid  for  the  support  of  that  member.  They 
cannot  have  it  both  ways.  They  cannot  enjoy  the 
advantages  which  would  be  theirs  if  they  paid  a  family 
wage — indeed,  which  would  be  theirs  only  if  they  paid 
much  more  than  a  family  wage — and,  at  the  same  time, 
refuse  to  pay  such  a  wage. 

Therefore  when  the  daughter  of  a  workingman  grows 
up,  say  to  the  age  of  i8  or  19,  and  is  able  to  do  an  adult 
woman's  work,  she  ought  not  to  be  dependent  on  her 
father's  work,  and  her  employer  has  no  right  to  take 
advantage  of  her  father's  wilhngness  to  encumber  his 
little  budget  with  her  support.  She  works  for  her 
emplo5/erandhasaright  to  get  the  value  of  her  work,  and 
that  value  is  at  the  least  what  would  support  her  (even 
if  she  got  nothing  from  her  father)  in  frugal  comfort. 
For  the  vast  majority  of  women  earning  wages,  their 
earnings  mean  for  them  food,  clothes,  housing,  the 
necessaries  of  life.  It  might  be  laid  down  as  a  general 
principle  that  an  employer  must  always  consider  every 
grown  girl  or  woman,  whose  labour  is  to  be  had  in  the 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN.     55 

labour  market,  as  one  who  works  through  necessity ; 
that  he  is  not  therefore  at  hberty  to  beat  down  her  wages 
as  low  as  he  can  ;  that  she  has  a  right  to  demand,  and 
does  in  fact  demand — no  matter  what  in  her  timidity 
or  shame  she  may  say  to  the  contrary — the  full  value 
of  her  work,  and  that  that  value  is  at  the  least  what 
would  maintain  her  in  reasonable  comfort. 

For  consider  the  classes  of  women  who  work.  The 
majority  are  probably  unmarried  girls  who  are  too  old  to 
remain  a  burden  on  their  father's  slender  resources.  They 
have  no  one  on  whom  they  can  depend,  and  too  often  (as 
in  Ireland  where  the  marriage  rate  is  lower  than  almost 
anywhere  in  Europe)  have  little  prospect  of  finding  a 
husband  to  support  them.  Multitudes,  too,  are  widows, 
often  with  young  famiUes  to  feed  and  clothe  and  house 
upon  their  earnings. 

Lastly,  there  are  the  married  women  whom  the  goad  of 
necessity  drives  forth  to  work.  If  the  husband  got  a 
family  wage  his  wife  would  not — at  least  generally  would 
not — have  to  do  anything  but  mind  her  house.  But  a 
family  wage  is,  to  say  the  least,  not  universal  outside 
the  ranks  of  skilled  and  organised  labourers  who  can 
force  it  from  their  employers,  and  therefore  the  married 
woman  is  often  forced  to  eke  out  her  husband's  wages 
by  her  own  hard  work.  We  must  remember,  too,  that 
her  wages  so  earned,  even  if  they  bring  up  the  total 
family  earnings  to  the  level  of  a  family  wage,  are  always 
eaten  into  by  the  wastage  and  the  many  expenses  which 
are  entailed  by  her  absence  from  home. 

How  often,  indeed,  are  the  needs  of  the  wife  equal 
to  those  of  her  unmarried  or  of  her  widowed  sister  !  Her 
husband  is  often  not  a  model.  His  wages  often  go  into 
the  till  of  the  publican  or  the  pocket  of  the  betting  agent. 
He  may  be  an  incapable  workman  unable  to  find  employ- 
ment, or  he  may  be  thrown  out  of  work  by  the  crises 
that  so  often  occur  in  trade,  or  he  may  be  disabled 
or  sick  for  lengthy  periods.  If  his  wife  is  to  be 
treated  as  a  supplementary  wage-earner,  how  can  she 
face  the  heavy  responsibilities  which  then  devolve  on 
her  ? 


56     THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN. 

(C) "  A  woman's     A  man,  as  we  have  seen,  has  a  right 

needs  are  less    to   a   wage   which   will   enable   him    to 

than  a         support    himself   and    his    family.        A 

^iiatt's."        woman  on  the  other  hand  has  a  right  only 

to  the  smaller  wage  which  will  ensure  her  own  personal 

support.     But  some  employers,  ignoring  the  obligations 

of  the  workmen's  family  wage,  and  paying  them  a  wage 

which  would  just  suffice  to  support  them  individually, 

pay  women  workers  much  less  still,  on  the  ground  that 

women's  needs  are  less  than  those  of  men. 

This  contention  is,  as  a  general  rule,  true. 
How  far  this  Woman  eats  less  and  drinks  less  than  a 
-  case.  ^^^^  ^^^^  gj^g  ^Qgg  j^Q^  smoke.  But  in  all 
else,  lodging,  dress  and  the  rest,  she  has  much  the  same 
expenses  as  a  man.  Moreover,  there  often  exist  circum- 
stances which  tend  to  bring  her  needs  up  towards  the 
level  of  men's  needs.  If  she  work  at  home  for  instance 
she  has  heavy  expenses  of  hght  and  heating  from  which 
a  man  working  outside  or  in  a  factory  is  exempt.  Then, 
too,  if  she  be  married  her  work  is  interrupted  from  time 
to  time  by  prolonged  absences  which  bring  down  the 
value  of  her  nominal  wage.  Then  again  in  certain  occupa- 
tions she  has  to  dress  with  a  regard  to  style  and  elegance, 
which  entails  expenses  from  which  the  soberer  -and  more 
constant  style  of  men's  clothes  exempts  them. 

There  is  probably  not  such  a  big  difference  between 
men's  and  women's  needs  as  certain  interested  people 
would  have  us  beheve.  A  woman's  food  and  drink — I 
suppose  habits  of  ordinary  sobriety — will  account  for 
about  three-fourths  of  her  wage.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  woman's  food  and  drink  ought  not  normally  to  be  less 
than  three-quarters  of  a  man's.  Supposing  that  a  woman's 
other  needs  are  equal  to  a  man's — and  we  have  seen 
that  they  are  often  greater — this  would  mean  that  her 
total  needs  would  be  four-llf  ths  of  a  man's.  Even  putting 
her  food  at  two-thirds  of  a  man's,  her  needs  would  still 
be  eight-elevenths  of  a  man's.  Yet  we  know  that  in  most 
trades  she  never  gets  four-fifths  or  even  eight-elevenths, 
but  at  most  two-thirds  or  half  of  a  man's  wage.  If  in 
such  trades  the  man  were  getting  a  family  wage  such  a 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN,     57 

disproportion  might  not  be  excessive,  but  he  very  often 

does   not   get   a   family  wage,   and   this   disproportion 

simply  means  that  the  woman  is  not  getting  nearly 

enough.    Indeed  I  have  not  put  the  woman's  case  strongly 

enough,  for  you  will  all  know  of  cases  where  she  does 

not  ppt  even  half  of  what  an  unskilled  man  will  get. 

Woman's  The  real  fact  which  cannot  be  bhnked, 

weakness  the    is  that  a  woman 's  wage  is  so  low  compared 

main  cause  of    to  a  man's,  not  because  her  needs  are  so 

her  oppression,  much  less,   but  because  her  power  of 

self-protection  is  less,  because  she  can  be  exploited  much 

more  easily  than  a  man. 

When  can  There  are  in  Ireland  I  know,  thank  God, 

employers  justly  conscientious  employers  who   pay  their 

plead  inability  to  women  workers  a  proper  wage.  All  honour 

pay  a  proper    to  them,  and  God's  blessing  be  on  them 

^wage  to  women  ?  for  resisting  the  temptations  that  beset 

them  and  the  bad  examples  that  are  about  them.    There 

are  others  that  do  not  pay  a  proper  wage.     If  such  men 

say  that  they  cannot  afford  this  wage  they  are  adopting 

a  more  reasonable  hue  of  defence  than  the  ones  I  have 

referred  to.    They  may  or  may  not  be  justified  in  alleging 

their  inabihty  to  pay  a  proper  wage.    It  may  often  happen 

in  Ireland  that  small  employers  are  so  justified.     I  gave 

in  the  preceding  lecture  the  principles  by  which  in  any 

particular  case  this  plea  of  inabihty  is  to  be  judged  vahd 

or  in  vahd. 

It  however  requires  only  a  slight  ac- 

Thosewhocan    quaintance  with  the  world  about  us  to 

*^pay  a  proper     see  that  there  are  employers  who   grow 

j  wage  and  do     j-i^h  and  very  rich  on  the  sweated  labour 

not  are  guilty    ^^|-    y^Qj-nen,    and    who    could    therefore 

oism.  quite  well  afford  to  pay  them  a  proper 

wage,  and  yet  do  not  pay  it.    Such  men  have  no  excuse. 

They  are  robbing  their  women  Workers,    They  are  safe 

indeed  from  the  pohce  court,  safe  because  laws  have 

not  yet  been  framed — as  thej^  assuredly  will  be  in  the 

near  future — to  render  such  injustice  impossible,  but 

not  safe  from  the  wrath  of  God ;   and  all  their  social 

or  commercial  power  will  not  avail  them,  when,  at  the 


58     THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  WOMAN. 

hour  of    their   death,    God    will  avenge    on  them  the 
sufferings  of  their  victims. 

The  Church,  therefore,  intervenes  to 
The  Church  most  .^^^^^  women's  just  rights.  She  speaks, 
anxious  to  safe-  r    *.      t      ^^     j.      ■   j-   ■  t     ^  i 

guard  famUy  life '^^:^^    °l  ^^^'    *°.    ^dividual    employers, 
and  to  protect    ^c^Jir^g  them  their  duties  to  their  women- 
women  workers  workers,    and    threatening    them    with 
God's  wrath  if  they  neglect  their  duties. 
Again,  in  the  Encyclicals  of  her  Popes,  Leo  XIII. 
and  Pius  X.,  in  the  letters  of  her  Bishops,  in  the  sermons 
of  her  priests,  in  the  books  of  her  authors,  the  Church 
is  incessantly  calhng  on  States  and  Statesmen  to  pass 
laws  which  may  preserve  family  life  and  safeguard  the 
dignity  of  women  and  her  functions  in  society  against 
the  pressure  of  industrial  competition.    This  is  one  of  the 
first  objects  of  every  Catholic  political  party  in  the  Parlia- 
ments of  the  Continent. 

You  all  remember  that  beautiful  page 
Christians  ^^  ^^^  Gospel  where  we  read  that  Christ, 
'  gazing  on  the  multitude  in  the  desert, 
says  :  "  I  have  compassion  on  this  multitude,  because 
they  are  with  Me  now  twelve  days  and  have  not  what  to 
eat.  I  will  not  send  them  away  fasting  lest  they  faint 
by  the  way."  And  then  we  read  how  He  took  the  five 
loaves  and  the  fishes,  and  multiplying  them  by  His 
omnipotence,  fed  the  four  thousand  men,  besides  women 
and  children. 

Oh  !  may  Catholics  lay  to  heart  the  lessons  which 
Christ  then  wished  to  reach  ;  may  they  learn  to  think  of 
the  poor,  to  pity  them,  to  help  them,  and  especially  the 
poor  women  who  cannot  so  easily  help  themselves. 

Christ  dwelt  on  the  sufferings  of  these  poor  people  in 
the  desert.  He  felt  in  imagination  their  hunger.  He 
foresaw  their  fainting  by  the  way  as  they  dragged  them- 
selves wearily  back  to  their  villages.  How  little  do  we 
think  of  the  poor  about  us  !  How  httle  we  know  of  them  ! 
We  see  them  in  the  streets.  If  their  poverty  was  a  passing 
inconvenience  we  might  do  something,  but,  because 
it  is  a  cHnging  cloud  of  sorrow  that  chills  and  darkens 
their  whole  lives  from  cradle  to  grave,  we  merely  throw 
them  an  alms — a  kind  of  gesture  of  despair — and  turn 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE   WORKING  WOMAN.  59 

to  think  of  pleasanter  things.  The  poor  Uve  in  the  next 
street  to  us,  and  we  know  as  Httle  of  them  as  if  they 
hved  in  some  distant  country.  We  do  not  reflect  on  their 
feeUngs,  their  sufferings,  their  fears,  their  resources, 
their  difficulties,  their  temptations. 

Christ  teaches  us  to  pity  the  poor.  "  Misereor  super 
hanc  turbani."  "  I  have  pity  on  this  multitude."  He 
has  made  men  to  help  each  other  and  in  order  to  help 
they  must  first  have  love  and  pity.  "  By  this  shall  all 
men  know  that  you  are  My  Disciples,  that  you  love  one 
another."  The  words  seem  almost  ironical.  How  seldom 
do  we  prove  in  that  way  that  we  are  His  Disciples  ! 
How  often  it  happens  that  we  do  not  act  as  Christians ! 
What  do  I  say  ?  How  often  we  do  not  act  as  human 
beings  should  act !  We  care  only  for  those  of  our  house- 
hold. But  even  the  brute  beasts  love  their  offspring  and 
their  parents.  It  is  man's  privilege  and  his  duty  to 
embrace  in  his  love  those  outside  his  home. 

Christ  teaches  us  to  help  the  poor.  Sad  indeed  would 
be  the  state  of  the  poor  were  it  not  for  the  poor,  for  it  is 
the  poor  who  help  the  poor  most  often.  Very  beautiful 
is  the  sight  of  the  poor  giving  to  the  poor,  but  it  is  a  sad 
sight  too,  for  it  forces  one  to  reflect  that  many  who 
could  more  easily  give,  and  should  give,  do  not  give.  All 
of  us  can  give  something. 

God  gave  some  men  wealth,  but  it  is  wealth  burdened 
by  many  debts,  debts  of  justice  and  of  charity.  The 
owners  of  wealth  are  not  its  absolute  ov/ners.  They  are 
only  its  stewards,  and  will  have  to  account  to  God 
for  every  penny  of  it.  An  honest  man  will  refrain  from 
taking  money  that  does  not  belong  to  him.  "  God  has 
not  given  it  to  me,"  he  says.  Yet  he  will  often  chng 
fiercely  to  that  which  is  his,  and  will  feel  wronged  if  God, 
who  has  given  it  all  to  him,  asks  back  a  small  part  of  it 
as  charity  for  His  poor,  or  demands  it  as  justice. 

even  on  those  There  are  many  of  you  who  cannot 
who  are  not  rich  ^^jyg  ^f  your  money,  but  there  is  none 
to  undertake  sowal^f  you  who  cannot  give  of  the  charity 

protection  o!     ^^    V^^"^     thought,     your     care,     your 
women.        work. 

Our  Holy  Father  Pope  Leo  XHI.  felt  some  of  that 


60  THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING   WOMAN. 

sacred  compassion  which  filled  and  still  fills  the  heart 
of  Christ.  In  especial  he,  the  father  of  the  Christian 
family,  was  moved  with  pity  for  the  multitudes  of  his 
daughters  lying  wounded  and  helpless  beneath  the  cruel 
crushing  injustices  of  modern  industriahsm,  and  he  knew 
that  he  would  not  appeal  in  vain  to  their  sisters  of 
happier  condition  to  come  to  their  rescue ;  and  our 
present  Pope  Pius  X.  has  often  repeated  this  appeal. 

Their  appeals  have  not  been  in  vain.  There  has  always 
been  a  wealth  of  charity  in  Catholic  women's  hearts. 
Their  individual  acts  of  kindness  will  be  richly  rewarded 
by  Christ,  but  individual  charity  can  only  touch — can 
hardly  make  an  impression  on  the  deep  black  mass  of 
misery  that  burdens  and  disgraces  every  town  and  every 
countryside  in  the  land.  To  introduce  a  strong  solvent 
into  that  mass  of  misery,  charity  must  be  organised, 
must  become  social  work. 

To   this   social   work   and    especially 
Catholics  in     work  for  women,  CathoUcs,  and  especially 
other  lands      Catholic  women,  have  devoted  themselves 
have  done  much.      ui  t  j-  4.1.     n 

Why  not  in  nobly.  In  every  country  on  the  Con- 
Ireland  also  ?  f  ii^ei^f — would  I  could  say  quite  as  much 
for  Ireland  ! — thousands  and  thousands 
of  Catholic  women,  rich  and  poor,  humble  and  noble, 
devote  much  of  their  time  and  sacrifice  much  of  their 
pleasures.  They  give  their  serious  thought  to  examining 
the  conditions  of  life  of  their  poorer  sisters,  they  visit 
them  in  their  homes,  they  gather  them  together,  form 
them  into  classes  which  they  often  teach  themselves, 
they  have  them  taught  trades,  they  inspire  them  with 
hope  and  courage  in  face  of  Ufe's  dif^culties,  with  mutual 
helpfulness  and  mutual  trust,  they  organise  them  in 
various  societies  of  mutual  help,  and  they  unite  them 
in  associations  for  the  defence  of  their  rights  against  all 
oppression. 

Such  works  are  the  bread  which  Christ  through  the 
mouth  of  the  Pontiff  demands  of  Catholics,  for  the  poor 
to-day,  far  more  than  alms.  This  is  the  bread  which  the 
power  of  God  will  multiply  four  thousandfold  in  generous 
hands.  The  example  of  our  Cathohc  brethren  in  other 
lands  teaches  and  encourages  us  to  found  such  works. 


"  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  CHILD." 

ONE  day— you  will  all  remember  the 
scene — Oar  Lord  on  one  of  His 
Christ  with  the  journeys  through  the   Holy  Land 

little  children  comes  to  a  little  village.  The  villagers, 
as  is  the  way  in  the  East,  gather  round 
the  stranger,  and  with  all  the  more  curiosity  and  ex- 
citement as  they  have  heard  of  this  man  as  a  great 
teacher  and  a  great  wonder-worker.  The  men  leave 
their  fields,  the  women  leave  their  housework,  and, 
taking  their  children  go  out  and  form  a  group  about 
Him.  He  seats  Himself  in  one  of  the  open  spaces  and 
begins  to  teach  them  His  doctrine.  As  He  speaks  to 
them  (or,  rather,  talks  with  them),  the  Uttle  children, 
attracted  by  His  gentle  ways  and  kindly  face,  lose  their 
shyness  and  press  close  in  upon  Him.  They  take  hold 
of  His  hands  and  cUmb  upon  His  knees  and  interrupt 
Him  with  their  artless  chatter.  Each  of  the  mothers 
gets  Him  to  bless  her  own  little  one.  His  Disciples, 
knowing  how  tired  He  is,  grow  impatient.  They 
strive  to  draw  the  children  away  and  they  chide  their 
mothers,  but  He  stops  them,  saying,  "  Suffer  little 
children  to  come  to  Me." 

And  indeed  we  can  understand  why  He  loved  to 
have  those  little  children  about  Him.  Christ  hated 
sin,  yet  He  lived  in  a  world  of  sin.  The  men  and 
women  whom  He  met  at  every  moment  reeked  with 
sin.  The  sight  of  their  souls,  fouled  with  impure 
thoughts  and  wicked  deeds  distressed  Him  ;  on  httle 
children  alone  could  His  eyes  rest  with  refreshment 
and  gladness.  Looking  into  their  eyes  He  could  see 
down  into  the  crystal-clear  depths  of  their  souls.  How 
precious  to  His  Heart  were  they  !  Men  and  women 
were  already  spoiled.  But  these  little  ones  !  Oh  !  if 
4 

ARA.    C 


62  THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD. 

He  could  only  preserve  them  !  If  He  could  only  have 
them  grow  up  as  they  were,  in  safety  and  innocence  ! 
He  would  guard  them  as  the  apple  of  His  eye. 

The  Church  dwells  with  pleasure  on 

is  typical  of     that  scene  of  the  fathers  and  mothers 

the  Church's     bringing   their   children   to   Christ   that 
doctrine.        -^^  might  teach  them  and  bless  them, 
for  that  scene  beautifully  typifies  her  doctrine. 

The  parent  alone  has  the  right  and 

The  Church      the  duty  of  caring  for  the  child.     No 
ever  the        power  on  earth  can  dispute  that  right 

Guardian  of     ^j^j^  ^^^  parent.     The  parent  has  the 

the  family.      ^^^^  ^^  brmging  the  httle  ones  to  Christ 

so  that  He  may  teach  them  and  bless  them  for  Eternal 

hfe,  and  Christ  will  not  allow  anyone  to  prevent  the 

parent  from  bringing  them  to  Him. 

The  Church  has,  therefore,  always  jealously  guarded 
the  rights  and  liberties  of  the  family.  She  does  not 
contest  with  the  State — how  could  she?  for  the  authority 
of  the  State  is  from  God  too — its  claim  to  see  that  the 
rights  of  the  children  to  material  well-being  and  to 
education  are  not  violated  by  unworthy  parents  ;  but 
she  has  always  condemned  with  her  God-given  authority 
any  attempt  of  the  civil  power  to  encroach  on  that 
divine  institution,  the  family. 

And  what  a  wonderful  institution  it  is,  the  Christian 
family  !  The  father,  with  his  strong  and  abiding  love 
for  wife  and  children,  bravely  shielding  them  from 
all  harm,  planning  and  working  unceasingly  to  provide 
them  with  all  they  need,  and  in  turn  finding  in  them  his 
consolation,  his  rest,  his  strength,  his  joy,  his  pride. 
The  mother  unselfishly  working  out  her  divine  mission, 
equally  responsible  and  equally  consoled,  the  stay  and 
the  joy  of  her  husband  and  the  trainer  of  her  little 
ones. 

And  what  a  training  the  Christian  mother  gives  ! 
Sacrificing  herself  to  the  children  to  whom  she  has 
given  hfe,  she  saves  their  hves  a  hundred  times  in  the 
early  days  of  their  existence,  and  as  they  grow  she 
ministers  to  their  needs  and  comforts.  Gently  and 
firmly  she  represses  their  leanings  to  evil,  and  draw 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING   CHILD.  63 

out  their  good  dispositions  by  a  thousand  ruses  of  which 
a  mother's  heart  alone  has  the  secret ;  she  opens  their 
intelHgence,  forms  their  judgment,  purifies  their  hearts, 
excites  their  energy,  leading  them  sweetly  to  love  God 
and  their  neighbour,  and  to  stand  by  duty  amid  the 
temptations  of  hfe. 

The  Church  has,  therefore,  always  striven  to  ensure 
that  neither  custom  nor  law  nor  economic  circumstances 
should  ever  impair  the  perfect  freedom  of  the  family  in 
performing  its  proper  functions.  She  wishes  that  the 
father  should  be  able  to  provide  all  things  necessary 
for  the  proper  well-being  of  his  home ;  that  the  mother 
should  have  leisure  to  manage  her  household  and  to 
train  her  children ;  that  the  children  should  find  beneath 
the  family  roof-tree  the  protection  and  the  maintenance 
they  require,  till  they  in  turn  be  strong  enough  and 
matured  enough,  in  body  and  mind  and  character,  to 
go  forth  into  the  world. 

Such  has  always  been  the  Church's 

For  instance,     ideal.     There  have  been  periods  in  the 

m  old-time      world's  history  when  Christian  society 

*  *^  realised  in  great  measure  this  ideal. 

In  our  own  country,  more  than  anywhere  else  in  the 
world,  was  the  family  solidly  welded  together  and  its 
rights  guarded  by  Christian  custom  and  just  laws.  Not 
merely  were  bonds  of  immediate  relationship  made  firm 
by  mutual  legal  obligations  and  responsibihties,  and 
extended  by  means  of  fosterage,  but  these  binding  prin- 
ciples were  applied  in  their  measure  to  more  distant 
relationships,  and  finally  to  the  whole  tribe.  The  strong 
family  unity  and  affection  which  characterises  Irish  hfe, 
especially  Irish  country  hfe,  is  a  remnant  that  has  sur- 
vived the  grinding  to  pieces  of  our  civilisation  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries. 

In   England   and   on    the   Continent, 

and  in  the       where  society  was  differently  organised. 

Feudal  ages,     family  life  was  fostered  by  the  feudal 

system,  especially  in  the  rural  districts. 

As  for  the  towns,  their  organisation  and  management 

were  in  the  hands  of  the  guilds  which,  guided  by  tht 

Church,  always  set  the  greatest  store  on  the  preser- 

J* 


64  THE   CHURCH   AND   THE    WORKING  CHILD. 

vation  of  a  vigorous  family  life  among  their  members, 
A  grown  man  was  never  considered  as  an  isolated  indi- 
vidual, but  always  as  the  head,  actually  or  in  prospect, 
of  the  household.     His  wages  were  fixed  with  a  view 
to  enabling  him  to  meet  his  family  obligations.     The 
price  of  his  handiwork  was  fixed  to  ensure  such  wages. 
The  conditions  of  his  work,  its  duration,  its  intervals, 
its  place,  were  regulated  so  as  not  to  interfere  with  the 
discharge    of    his    primary    obligations   to    his  family. 
In  the  women's  guilds  care  was  taken  that  the  condi- 
tions of  their  work  should  not  be  prejudicial  to  their 
strength  or  their  good  morals. 
How  different        How  different  is  the  state  of  things 
to-day  is  the     to-day  !     The   family  is  attacked,   dis- 
state  of  the     integrated,  scattered — to  what  an  extent 
children  of  the    in  some  countries  we,  in  Ireland,  thank 
poor,  God,    can    hardly    reahse.     The    wide- 

spread immorality  of  the  day  attacks 
the  very  basis  of  the  family.  Infidehty  attacks  it,  weak- 
ening parental  authority  by  evil  laws  of  succession,  and 
interfering  with  the  sacred  liberties  of  parents  in  the 
education  and  the  religion  of  their  children.  Socialists 
attack  it,  as  it  stands  between  them  and  their  dream 
of  universal  State  management. 

Worst    of    all    perhaps,    modem    in- 

especially  owing  dustrial  development  attacks  it,  depriv- 

to  modern       ing  fathers  of  the  wages  necessary  for 

industrialism,    the  decent  support  of  their  households ; 

driving  forth  mothers  from  their  homes 

to  work ;  forcing  young  children  too  into  the  demoralising 

factory,  or  out  on  the  streets,  and  causing  them  to  grow 

up  without  care  or  training. 

Think  of  the  squalid  degrading  life 
Slum  life.  of  the  poor  quarters  and  the  slums 
of  the  modern  city,  multitudes  of 
human  beings  huddled  together  in  dingy  hovels  and 
demorahsing  tenements  that  endanger  all  the  decencies 
of  hfe,  all  striving  frantically  with  each  other  for  daily 
bread — men  with  men,  women  with  men,  children  with 
both — finding  in  intoxication  their  only  pleasure,  their 
only  escape  from  their  misery. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  CHILD.  65 

industrialism  has  not  given  of  its  riches  to  Ireland, 
but  it  has  wrought  its  terrible  work  upon  our  poor 
people.  It  has  not  given  us  thriving  towns  or  a  grow- 
ing population,  but  it  has  given  us  slums  in  abundance, 
and  has  rotted  our  towns  with  the  black  plague  of 
pauperism. 

How  can  the  delicate  flower  of  family  virtue  thrive 
in  such  a  fetid,  fever-laden,  sunless  air  ?     How  can  the 
garden  of  the  world  bring  forth  flowers  and  fruit  if  the 
young  plants  are  to  be  torn  violently  from  their  roots 
and  native  soil,  and  cast  about  pell-mell  in  these  filthy, 
slums,  to  wither  or  take  root  where  and  how  they  may  ? 
What  kind  of  training  will  children 
Mother  often    get  if  their  mother  is  absent  from  home, 
absent  from     from  morning  till  late  evening,  working 
home.  in  some  factory  or  workshop,  or  charing, 

or  selHng  in  the  streets,  or  begging  ? 
Happy  perhaps,  are  the  30  per  cent,  of  such  children 
who  die  in  infancy.  Nay,  happy  perhaps,  are  those 
many  others,  scrofulous,  tuberculous,  deformed,  half- 
developed,  who  are  doomed  to  die  in  their  early  years. 
For,  what  must  be  the  fate  of  those  who  live  ?  They 
suffer  cruelly  from  cold  and  hunger ;  they  are  cuffed 
and  bulhed  by  their  rough  companions,  they  become 
brutalised  in  nature,  they  live  in  the  streets  picking  up 
foul  language  and  hideous  forms  of  vice.  Though  they 
remain  ignorant — for  there  is  no  one  to  send  them  to 
school — they  develop  a  low  cunning  and  sharpness  of 
wit,  which  enables  them  to  steal  and  cheat  and  he  and 
prey  on  society ;  they  grow  up  dangerous  and  depraved 
men  and  women. 

.  Even   if  the  mother  stays  at   home 

Even  a  she     toiling  at  ill-paid  piece-work,  or  unable 

things  oUm     ^^  ^^t  any  work,  the  case  is  often  not 

not  better       much  better.     Her  home   (if  one  may 

use  the  word)  may  be  some  ill-smelling 

room   with    filth-sodden    floor   and   mouldy   walls   and 

broken    windows,    or    perhaps    only    part    of    such    a 

room    shared    with    others.     One    cannot,    in    fairness, 

expect  her  to  make  such  a  place  cheery  and  comfortable. 

She  could  and  would  remove  dirt,  but  she  cannot  change 


66  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKING  CHILD. 

dirt  into  cleanliness.  Oh  !  how  many  of  the  dwellings 
of  the  poor  in  Ireland  are  such  as  would  rob  a 
woman  who  would,  if  she  had  a  chance,  be  a  cleanly 
and  industrious  housekeeper,  of  all  heart  and  energy. 
Still  less  can  she  give  a  home-training  to  her  children 
in  such  a  place.  They  cannot  be  kept  fettered  and 
depressed  in  such  dungeons.  They  are  young,  and  need 
exercise,  life,  movement.  Perforce  they  go  out  on  the 
streets  and  lanes,  and  live  there,  learning,  boys  and 
girls  alike,  the  secrets  of  evil  in  the  wild  hfe  of  street 
arabs.  Their  mother  may  send  them  to  school,  but  the 
school  day  is  not  the  whole  day,  and  the  school  year 
is  not  the  whole  year;  or  she  may  be  ashamed  to  send 
them  to  school  in  their  rags,  and  who  can  blame 
her  ?  or,  she  may  have  to  keep  them  at  home  to  mind 
the  younger  children,  or  to  bring  their  father's  dinner 
to  him  in  some  distant  part  of  the  city ;  or  she  may  have 
to  send  them  out  to  sell  newspapers  or  matches  or 
flowers  in  the  street,  so  that  they  may  add  some  little 
mite  to  their  father's  wretched  wages. 

What  wonder  that  a  mother's  influence  counts  for 
little  in  the  upbringing  of  such  children  ?  They  grow 
up  in  wild  independence.  They  often  do  not  trouble 
to  come  home  even  at  night.  Some  hundreds  of  boys 
sleep  out  of  doors  in  passages  and  dark  corners — I 
know  not  where — in  the  summer  time  in  Dubhn ;  in 
the  same  city  of  Dubhn  there  are  between  5,000  and 
7,000  children — just  think  of  it — who  do  not  go  to  any 
school ;  and  what  is  true  of  Dublin  is,  I  take  it,  true 
in  its  measure  of  other  towns. 

Then,  again,   even    if    the    house    is 
The  women  of    capable    of    being    made    comfortable 
the  poor  classes  ^j^^^  attractive,  the  poor  woman  often 
nowadays  0  en  ^q^j^j-^q^  make  it  so,  for  she  is  generally 
housekeepers.    ^   wretched  housekeeper.     Woman   has 
a    natural    instinct    for    housekeeping ; 
but  this,  like  every  other  instinct,  is  frail  and  vague  at 
the  beginning,  easily  dulled  and  destroyed  if  not  exer- 
cised.   The  old-time  housekeeping,  with  its  recipes  and 
proverbs  and  absorbing  work — a  science  handed  down 
for  centuries  from  mother  to  daughter,  among  rich  and 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD.  67 

poor  alike — is  dead,  killed  by  the  development  of  fac- 
tories and  shops,  which  rendered  most  of  it  useless  ;  and 
the  very  different  kind  of  housekeeping  suited  to  the 
times  is  perfectly  unknown  to  the  poor.  It  is  a  fact 
beyond  all  dispute  that  the  homes  of  most  of  our  poor 
are  much  more  unhealthy,  cheerless,  and  demoralising 
to  family  life  than  they  would  be  if  this,  one  of  the  most 
necessary  of  all  sciences,  were  better  taught  and  prac- 
tised. 

Horrible  -^^^  industrialism  has  blacker  crimes 

condition  of     *«  answer  for.    Not  content  with  driving 

working        forth    comfort    and    pleasure    and    joy 

children  in  the    from    the   nursery   of   the    young,   and 

early  nineteenth  filling  it  instead  with  sighs  and  tears 

century.  and  frantic  rush  and  filthy  disorder, 
modern  industrialism  drives  forth  the  httle  children 
themselves,  and  then  pursues  and  hunts  them  down, 
wasting  their  young  lives  ere  those  hves  have  well  begun. 
The  blackest  indictment  against  our  civilisation  is 
the  history  of  child  labour  in  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
is  more  damning  even  than  the  history  of  women's  labour. 
In  England  once  some  great  manufacturers  were 
complaining  to  a  Minister  of  the  Crown  of  the  scarcity 
of  labour.  The  Minister  answered  :  "  Why  not  use 
httle  children  ?  "  These  words  are  attributed  to  Pitt. 
They  were  words  worthy  of  Herod.  From  that  time, 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  till  the  year 
1833,  when  the  age  of  nine  years  was  fixed  as  a 
minimum  for  children  working  in  factories,  whole 
holocausts  of  these  helpless  little  beings  were  ruthlessly 
sacrificed — a  new  massacre  of  the  innocents — by  men 
professing  to  be  civihsed  and  Christian.  After  the  inven- 
tion of  steam  power  there  was  no  longer  such  need  for 
the  muscular  strength  of  man's  arm.  The  steel  arm  of 
the  machine  now  did  the  work,  and  this  steel  arm  could 
be  directed  by  the  light  touch  of  a  child's  hand.  The 
delicate  fingers  of  almost  an  infant  could  attach  the 
strings  and  tie  the  threads  of  the  looms,  and,  if  the 
children  were  not  tall  enough,  boxes  were  tied  to  their 
feet  to  raise  them  to  the  machine.  Multitudes  of  children 
all  over  England  were  carried  off  from  the  poor-houses 


68  THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD. 

or  bought  from  drunken  parents  or  kidnapped  from 
others,  and  sent  into  the  factories  of  the  North.  There 
they  were  shut  up  for  fifteen  or  sixteen  hours  a  day, 
beaten  with  fist  or  whip,  wasted  by  fever,  poorly 
fed,  sleeping  in  relays  huddled  together  on  foul 
straw,  often  with  chains  on  their  feet  to  prevent  their 
escape. 

Such  was  the  state  for  long  years  of  much  of  the 
industry  of  England,  and  it  was  not  very  different  on 
the  Continent.  Through  nearly  all  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury the  barriers  of  legal  protection  were  kept  lowered 
in  deference  to  the  sacred  doctrine  of  industrial  freedom. 
The  terrific  energies  of  machinery  and  the  fury  of  com- 
petition were  allowed  to  play  havoc  with  human  hves, 
and  especially  with  poor  children's  lives,  until,  httle 
by  little,  the  plain  humanity  of  public  opinion  revolted, 
and  forced  law  after  law  on  unwilhng  legislatures  all 
over  Europe  to  check  this  civilised  slavery. 

This  monstrous  system   has  been   in 
Even  yet  their   great    part    abolished.      Yet    not    alto- 
state  is  often    gether.     It  is  perfectly  well  known — and 
pitiable.        has  been  made  officially  public    many 
times — that  children  are,  even    to-day, 
often    shamefully   overworked   in    factories   and   work- 
rooms and  in  shops,  and  this  not  merely  in  England  or 
in  the  North  of  Ireland,  but  elsewhere  too. 

Then,  there  are  many  employers — nay,  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  them  if  we  reckon  (as  we  should)  the  share- 
holders in  big  companies— who  get  much  of  their  goods 
made  by  children  working  at  home.  Oh  !  how  God  must 
hardly  hold  His  hand  to  strike  our  society,  when  He 
beholds  the  cold,  filthy  hovels  where  thousands  of  His 
little  ones  work  wearily,  monotonously,  from  morn  till 
eve,  day  in  and  day  out,  year  in  and  year  out,  chnging 
desperately  to  hfe,  poor  little  plants  forced  to  bear 
fruit  in  what  should  be  their  season  of  flowers. 

The  employers  of  these  children  may 
^T  ""'^th"r  ^^^  ?°°^  ^"^^  fathers   and   mothers  of 
^  oTthem         families,    men    and    women    of    refined 
tastes    and    gentle    hearts    and    open- 
handed  charity.     They   would  not   be  guilty  of  any 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE    WORKING   CHILD.  69 

cruel,  or  even  of  any  inconsiderate  conduct  to  those 
with  whom  they  come  in  contact,  and  yet  the  wealth 
with  which  they  indulge  their  kind  feelings  to  their 
famihes  and  friends  is  (though  they  do  not  advert  to  it) 
weighted  with  the  curse  of  children's  misery.  Oh  !  if 
the  social  sense  of  the  world  were  more  developed ;  if 
the  rich  could  only  realise  the  ghastly  tragedies  enacted 
round  about  them,  tragedies  in  which  often  they  un- 
consciously play  the  part  of  cruel  tyrants ;  if  the  weary 
sigh  and  the  consumptive  cough  and  the  ceaseless 
monotonous  plying  of  the  sweated  work-girl's  needle 
or  machine  were  audible  in  the  office  where  merchants 
count  their  gains,  and  in  the  drawingrooms  where  kind 
ladies  boast  of  their  exploits  of  bargain-hunting  ;  if  the 
inventions,  electrical  and  the  rest,  which  join  the  upper 
strata  of  society  to  each  other  were  developed,  and 
joined  the  lower  strata  with  the  upper  so  that  the  rich 
could  always  see  and  feel  the  result  of  their  actions  on 
the  poor,  then  there  would  be  some  hope  that  the  kind- 
ness, which  is  dormant  in  so  many  hearts,  would  awake 
and  check  the  murderous  results  of  ignorance  and 
thoughtlessness. 

Again,    there   is   the   despairing   fact 

"  Blind  alley  "  that  the  vast  majority   of  young   chil- 

oocapations.     dren  in  Ireland,  if  they  work  at  all,  work 

at   occupations   that   lead    to   nothing, 

and  leave  them  no  better  prepared  to  face  life. 

Their  parents  are  too  poor  to  afford  the  expenses 
and  time  of  a  good  technical  training,  still  less  of  a 
proper  apprenticeship,  and  drive  them  forth  to  eke 
out  the  wretched  family  budget  with  their  httle  earn- 
ings. Little  boys  are  driven  out  to  sell  newspapers  or 
matches,  or  to  run  on  messages,  or  to  do  odd  jobs  about 
the  streets,  or  they  get  employed  as  caddies  or  boot- 
blacks, or  helps  in  workshops  or  what  not ;  girls  sell 
fruit  or  flowers  or  fish  or  get  some  wretched  job  in  a 
small  shop ;  or,  if  there  are  any  factories  in  the  locahty, 
they  may  be  taken  on  as  helps  or  hands,  employed  for 
their  immediate  commercial  utihty  to  do  quite  unskilled 
and  easily  learned  work,  learning  nothing  of  any  value 
for  their  after  hfe. 


70  THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD. 

I  know  of  no  more  consoling  proof  of  the  solid  good- 
ness, which  not  all  their  wretched  conditions  have  yet 
been  able  to  destroy  in  the  hearts  of  our  poor  people, 
than  the  fact,  testified  to  in  the  Royal  Commission  of 
1902,  that  the  large  majority  of  the  street-trading 
children  in  DubUn  and  other  cities  give  up  their  httle 
earnings  to  their  parents.  But  does  not  this  make  it 
all  the  sadder  to  reflect  that  children  of  such  good 
hearts  and  golden  promise  should  be  forced  to  pass  their 
young  hves  in  a  way  which  simply  prepares  them  to 
join  the  crowds  of  unskilled  and  starving  labourers 
that  fill  our  cities  ? 

The  preservation  of  Christian  family 

Importance  to    ijfg  among  the  poor,  the  proper  education 

society  of        ^^^  training,  moral,  mental,  and  tech- 

rthecSea   '^^c^^'  ^^  ^^^  y°^^"g  «^  ^^^  poor  classes 

of  the  poor      ^^  ^^  ^^^  ^°^*  °^  ^^®  social  question.    It 

is  a  matter  which  involves  the  peace,  the 

security,  the  continuity,  the   very  existence  of  society, 

not  to  speak  of  the  salvation  of  millions  of  immortal 

souls. 

The  upward   pressure  of   democracy 
Dangers  of      jg     irresistible.       The     people     already 
neglecting  this  ^     ^  .        , ,        •' 

training  possess  supreme  power  in  theory 
and  will  soon  possess  it  in  reahty  too. 
One  cannot  but  shudder  at  the  future  if  society  is 
to  be  preyed  on  by  the  large  class  which  we  are 
allowing  to  be  brought  up  in  our  midst  without  the 
restraints  of  family  feeling  or  religious  sense,  without 
the  seriousness  and  sense  of  responsibility^  which  a 
good  and  sohd  education  gives,  without  regard  for 
man's  law  or  God's  law,  each  one  only  acknow- 
ledging one  law — his  own  passions  and  desires.  The 
rise  of  this  dangerous  class  is  the  natural  result  of 
the  disorganisation  of  Christian  hfe  among  the  poor. 
We  can  see  the  danger  approach.  In  everj^  country 
of  Europe  to-day  (Ireland,  only  for  Belfast,  would 
be  the  single  exception)  there  are,  in  all  the  big  towns, 
whole  quarters  where  a  well-dressed  man  or  woman 
would  incur  imminent  risk  at  night-time  of  being  mur- 
derously assaulted. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING   CHILD.  7I 

In  Paris,  and  in  some  other  towns,  organised  mobs 
of  murderous  savages  infest  the  streets.  They  are 
merely  the  vanguard  of  the  new  barbarian  hordes 
that  threaten  to  destroy  once  more — and  more  com- 
pletely than  fifteen  hundred  years  ago — the  ancient 
civihsation  of  Europe. 

Is  it  not  inevitable  ?  Where  and  when  are  those  of 
the  rising  generation  to  learn  reverence  for  God's  law, 
respect  for  the  Uves  and  property  and  rights  of  others ; 
where  and  when  can  they  be  trained  to  practise  the 
social  virtues  of  charity,  of  justice,  of  patience,  and  of 
self-restraint,  of  industry,  except  at  their  mother's 
knee  ? 

Where  and  when  are  the  women  of  the  future 
to  learn  and  practise  kindness,  gentleness,  love  of  peace, 
attachment  to  duty ;  where  and  when  can  they  acquire 
the  qualities  which  will  make  them  modest  women, 
faithful  wives,  good  mothers  and  thrifty  housewives, 
except  as  little  girls  in  their  mother's  homes  ?  Where 
can  they,  boys  or  girls,  acquire  the  dehcacy  of  touch, 
the  sureness  of  eye,  the  understanding  of  theoretic  prin- 
ciple, the  sense  of  artistic  fitness  which  will  give  value 
to  their  handiwork  and  bring  honest  profit  to  them- 
selves, except  when  their  memories  are  fresh,  their  in- 
telhgences  alert,  and  their  members  supple  ?  When 
except  in  their  young  years,  can  they  acquire  the 
habits  of  industry  and  perseverance  and  the  devotion 
to  their  trade  which  will  enable  them  to  live  in  virtue 
and  comfort  and  independence,  and  to  bring  up  in  their 
turn  good  Christian  famiUes  ? 

Yes  !  even  our  own  material  interests,  the  safety  of 
ourselves  and  of  our  children  after  us,  demands  that  we 
should  not  allow  a  godless  generation  to  grow  up 
smarting  imder  a  sense  of  wrong. 

The    Church,    moved    with    pity    for 
1110^1  anx'ous    *^®^^  little  ones  of  Christ,  and  anxious 

about  this      ^°^   ^^^   salvation    of   the   millions    yet 
question.        ^^  come,  cannot  view  with  indifference 
the    sufferings,    the    neglect,    the    evil 
training  of  children. 


72  THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING   CHILD. 

She,  therefore,  speaks  out  plainly  and  straightly  in 
the  first  place  to  individual  employers. 

She  recalls  to  them  that  they  assume 

She  recalls  to  heavy  responsibilities  when  modern  in- 
a  sense  of  their  dustry  places  little  children  at  their 
duty  employers   mercy ;      that    they    must    not    regard 

of  the  young  such  children  as  so  much  fuel  for  their 
factories  or  so  much  cheap  labour ;  that 
the  children  unable  to  assert  their  rights — and  even  un- 
conscious of  having  any  rights — have  very  sacred  rights, 
and  have  God  behind  them  to  avenge  them.  Employers 
are  bound  in  strictest  justice  not  to  put  young  people 
who  work  for  them  in  their  factories  or  workshops  or 
yards,  at  any  work  which  might  be  dangerous  to  their 
health  and  development.  They — if  they  pay  for  it — 
have  a  right  to  draw  benefit  from  the  children's  energy  ; 
they  have  no  right  to  lessen  by  too  heavy  work,  or  too 
constant  or  too  prolonged  work,  the  span  of  the  chil- 
dren's lives.  They  must  consider  the  labour  inspector 
as  the  guardian  of  God's  justice,  and  not  as  a  mere 
official  to  be  hoodwinked  or  cajoled. 

Similarly,  shopkeepers  or  the  managers  of  workrooms 
are  reminded  that  when  they  take  in  a  young  person, 
boy  or  girl,  they  are  assuming  a  very  serious  responsi- 
bility ;  that  they  are  bound  to  regulate  their  business, 
its  conditions  and  hours,  so  that  no  injury  may  be  done 
to  the  health  or  the  morality  of  that  young  worker.  If 
the  child  lives  with  them,  their  responsibiUty  is  still 
heavier.  They  take  on  more  of  a  parent's  duty,  and 
should  show  more  of  a  parent's  loving  care.  They 
must  give  the  child  proper  food,  proper  time  for  rest, 
a  proper  degree  of  comfort,  a  reasonable  time  for  recrea- 
tion, and  mast  see  that  the  child  performs  his  or  her 
religious  duties.  If  they  take  in  a  young  person  as  an 
apprentice,  they  must  realise  that  they  are  not  getting 
a  worker  who  is  to  work  for  nothing  for  them  ;  that 
the  apprentice  is  paying  in  work  the  price  of  a  proper 
training ;  that  if  the  apprentice  works  for  them  they  in 
turn  are  bound  in  justice  to  work  for  their  apprentice 
by  careful  instruction  and  conscientious  care. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD.  73 

The  mistress,  too,  who  takes  a  young 
and  masters     girl  into  her   service,  is  warned  by  the 
and  mistresses    Church  that  she  is  assuming  the  respon- 
of  households.    sibiHty  for  a  soul  that  has  cost  Christ 
His    blood ;    that   she   is   bound,    as   a 
matter  of  conscience,  to  see  that  the  girl  be  not  harshly 
treated  or  over-worked,   that  she  have   every   facility 
and  receive  every  encouragement  to  perform  her  reli- 
gious duties,  and  that  her  good  morals  be  not  exposed 
to  temptation.    If,  therefore,  through  economy,  to  save 
gas  or  coal,  the  mistress  encourages,  or  even  forces — 
and  this  is  not  unknown — the  girl  to  go  out  constantly 
in  the  evenings,  and  run  the  danger  of  idle  wandering 
in  the  streets  of  a  town  where  she  has  no  relations,  the 
mistress  will  have  to  answer  to  Christ   if  anything  un- 
toward happen  the  girl  whom  He  has  placed  under  her 
charge. 

Many  complaints  are  made  nowadays  of  the  impu- 
dence, the  pretentiousness,  the  independent  spirit,  the 
unreasonable  demands  of  servant  girls.  These  com- 
plaints, I  have  not  any  doubt,  are  often  well  founded. 
A  girl  receiving  fair  wages  is  bound  to  show  a  proper  re- 
spect to  her  mistress,  and  to  perform  fully  and  well  the 
work  she  has  contracted  to  do.  However,  the  existence 
of  such  complaints  proves  principally  this,  that  servant 
girls,  like  every  other  part  of  the  labouring  class,  are 
becoming  conscious  that  they  have  not  been  treated 
with  the  consideration  or  the  justice  to  which  they  had 
a  right.  There  have  always  been  good  and  kind  mis- 
tresses. There  are  many  such  to-day,  and  they  must 
remember  that  the  good  of  every  class  have  always  to 
suffer  for  the  faults  of  the  bad.  In  Ireland  relations  be- 
tween employers  and  dependents  are  generally  kindly 
and  humane  ;  but  we  have,  I  fear,  been  infected  by  the 
spirit  of  Protestant  civilisation  which  regards  the  de- 
pendent as  a  being  of  an  inferior  order,  as  one  unworthy 
of  personal  sympathy  and  interest.  A  little  more  con- 
siderateness,  a  little  more  instruction,  and  a  little  less 
nagging  might  avail — and  have  in  other  countries 
availed — to  render  domestic  service  less  repulsive  to  a 
girl  of  spirit  and  sensitiveness.    After  all,  the  grievances 


74  THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING   CHILD. 

of  a  servant  girl  must  be  fairly  real  when  she  will  prefer 
a  life  of  slavish  work  at  starvation  wages  in  a  factory 
to  hving  surrounded  by — and  to  some  extent  sharing  in 
— the  comforts  of  a  luxuriously  appointed  house. 

The  mistress  is  reminded,  too,  that  she  is  bound  to 
pay  her  maid  the  full  value  of  her  work,  and  that  the 
lowest  price  at  which  she  can  get  that  work  done  may 
be  less  than  its  value.  If  she  does  pay  an  unjust  wage, 
she  is  bound  to  raise  it,  or  at  least  to  make  it  up  in 
serious  and  careful  training  of  the  girl.  Indeed,  in  any 
case,  she  would  perform  a  very  beautiful  act  of  charity — 
an  act  of  charity  rare  in  this  country,  though  common 
enough  in  other  Catholic  lands — if,  by  personal  instruc- 
tion, she  were  to  make  up  the  deficiencies  in  the  girl's 
education  ;  or,  if  by  sending  the  girl  to  a  night  school 
or  to  a  technical  school,  she  were  to  enable  the  girl  to 
provide  a  more  comfortable  hvelihood  for  herself. 

The  payment  of  a  just  wage  to  the  young 
She  insists      jg  ^j^g  ^lost  important  duty  which  the 

Tt*h^  "^^*^     employer  has  tov/ards  them  ;  for,  gener- 

,„r.,\r^Z  +«  f     ally  speaking,  its  observance  will  ensure 

workers  to  a     ,,  -^    V         ^  r    i,-        4.1  t   ^■ 

fair  wage.       *"®    observance    of    his    other    duties. 

Unfortunately,    however,    it    is    in    the 

performance    of  this    duty   that    employers   are  least 

subject  to  the  effective  control  of  the  law  or  of  public 

opinion.    The  defrauding  of  the  young  worker  is  the  sin 

which    employers,    and    even    Catholic    employers,    are 

most  liable  to  commit,  tempted  by  avarice  or  pressed 

by  competition. 

Therefore,  most  imperatively  and  solemnly  does 
the  Church  remind  all  emploj^ers,  owners  of  factories, 
workshops  or  workrooms,  contractors,  shopkeepers, 
masters  and  mistresses,  that  they  are  strictly  bound 
to  pay  their  young  workers  the  full  value  of  their  work. 
She  reminds  shareholders  in  companies  that  they — and 
not  the  directors — are  the  real  employers  of  the  com- 
panies' workers.  How  often  is  this  forgotten  ?  At 
their  general  meetings  shareholders  seem  anxious  about 
everything  except  about  their  duties  to  the  workers 
(often  children  workers),  from  whose  labour  they  get 
their  dividends. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD.  75 

The  value  of  a  young  labourer's  work 
How  this  fair  may  be  estimated  by  comparing  it  with 
wage  is  to  be  the  work  of  the  average  grown  labourer. 
computed.  If  a  child  does  a  half  or  a  third  of  the 
work  of  a  grown  worker,  that  child  has 
a  right  to  the  half  or  the  third  of  at  least  the  individual 
living  wage  of  that  grown  worker.  Is  this  not  fair  and 
reasonable  ?  Sometimes  the  child's  work  and  the 
grown  person's  work  differ  from  each  other  only  in 
quantity,  and  then  the  injustice  with  which  the  young 
labourer  is  sometimes  treated  is  clear  enough.  More 
often,  however,  the  work  of  the  adult  and  that  of 
the  young  are  quite  different  in  character,  and  cannot 
be  easily  compared  with  each  other.  Still,  even  in  such 
cases,  common  sense  can  often  do  what  mathematical 
calculations  cannot.  When  a  strong  boy,  doing  almost 
a  man's  work,  gets  a  shilling  a  day,  and  then,  entering 
a  Union,  immediately  gets  for  work  of  a  very  shghtly 
skilled  character  three  times  as  much,  it  is  not  hard  to 
conclude  that  his  previous  wage  was  an  unjust  one. 
And  when  one  hears  of  cases  where  employers  work  their 
concerns  almost  exclusively  by  means  of  children,  dis- 
missing them  as  they  arrive  at  a  certain  age,  and 
filling  their  places  with  a  fresh  supply  of  "  cheap  and 
docile  "  labour,  it  is  not  rash  or  uncharitable  to  conclude 
that  the  value  of  the  children's  work  is  not  being  given 
them  in  wages. 

The  plea  that  the  labour  of  the  young  is 
E  cu  es        ^°^  equal  to  that  of  the  adult  is  only  a  half- 
advanced  by     truth  used  as  a  dishonest  excuse.     The 
some  employers  labour  of  the   young  is,  no   doubt,  less 
of  the  young,    valuable  than  that  of  the  adult,  but  is  it 

(A)  "Their      only  one- fourth  or  one-sixth  as  valuable  ? 
labour  is  of     And  if  it  is  more  valuable  than  this — as  it 
little  value."     undoubtedly  often  is — if  its  value  is  two- 
thirds  or  three-fourths,  why  is  its  wage 

only  one-fourth  or  one-sixth  ? 

And  so  of  the  other  pleas  invented 

(B)  Their      j-q    defend    the    exploitation    of   young 
needs  are       labour.     "  Young  people  need  less  than 

^       *  adults,  therefore,"  it  is  argued,  "  there 

is  neither  injustice  nor  hardship  in  paying  them  less," 


76  THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD, 

True,  but  are  the  needs  of  the  young  only  one-fourth 
or  one-sixth  of  the  needs  of  the  adult  ?  For  instance, 
are  the  housing,  clothes,  food  and  other  necessities  of 
a  boy  or  a  girl  of  18  years  old  only  one-fourth  or  one- 
sixth  of  the  individual  necessities  of  a  grown  person  ? 
Of  course  they  cost  far  more  than  one-fourth  or  one- 
sixth.  Who,  then,  pays  the  difference  ?  Evidently 
the  father  of  the  boy  or  the  girl. 

(C)  "  Their  "  Exactly,"  some   employers  will  say, 

wages  are       "  My  young  hand  is,  for  the  most  part, 

supplementary  supported  by  his  father,  who  works  for 
of  their  parent's  my  fellow-manufacturer.  Therefore, 
wages."  I  need  only  give  him  a  small  wage." 
il  he  s  .ys  this,  he  is  admitting  that  his  business  is  a 
parasite  on  the  business  of  his  fellow-manufacturer. 
But,  be 'that  as  it  may,  his  fellow-manufacturer  will 
most  often  deny  any  obligation  to  do  more  than  supply 
the  individual  needs  of  his  workman,  the  father  of  the 
child.  In  other  words,  he  will  deny  any  obligation 
of  paying  a  family  wage.  Nay,  the  employer  of  the 
child  also,  if  he  employs  men  as  well,  will  often  deny 
any  obligation  of  paying  a  family  wage.  Who,  then, 
is  to  support  the  child  ?  The  employer  of  the  child 
admits  only  the  duty  of  paying  for  part  of  the  child's 
support.  The  employer  of  the  child's  father  will  often 
deny  his  obligation  of  paying  any  part  of  it.  Who,  then, 
is  to  pay  for  the  rest  of  the  child's  support  ?  You  see 
how  some  employers  are  inconsistent  as  well  as  unjust. 
In  paying  their  men-labourers,  they  say  they  are  not 
bound  to  support,  even  partly,  the  children  of  those  men, 
and  then,  when  they  are  paying  the  children,  they  say  they 
have  already  given  their  father  something  for  their  support. 

If  the  family  wage,  prescribed  by  the  teaching  of  the 
Church,  were  always  given  to  the  man-labourer,  children 
would  not  be  forced  to  work  at  the  early  age  at  which 
they  work  now.  They  would  spend  their  early  years 
more  usefully  in  acquiring  a  better  education  and  train- 
ing or  a  more  thorough  apprenticeship.  The  grievances 
and  the  discontent  of  the  labouring  class  would  almost 
cease  to  exist,  and  the  wealth-producing  energies  of  the 
community  would  be  vastly  increased. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILO.  'J'] 

(D)  "  Better         ^  need  hardly  mention  the  excuse,  as 

give  them  a     transparent  as  it  is  hypocritical,  given 

small  wage      by   the   man,   who,   while   underpaying 

than  have  them  young    workers,    actually    poses     as    a 

idle."  social  benefactor. 

Such  a  man  has  been  known  to  say  :    "  If  I  did  not 
keep  my  business  going,  my  poor  httle    work-children 
would  be  exposed  to  the  vagabond  life  of  the  streets  ; 
they  would  not  be,  as  now,  adding  to  their  fathers' 
resources."     This  may  be  true,  but  it  is  equally  true 
that  it  is  not  necessary  for  this  philanthropist  to  rob 
his  children  in  order  to  save  them  from  the  streets.    The 
first  duty  his  philanthropy  ought  to  suggest   to   him 
would  be  to  refrain  from  robbing  these  children,   for 
robbing  them  he  is,  if  he  does  not  give  them  the  value  of 
their  work.     Until  he  gives  them  that  full  value,  the 
public  will  say  with  justice  that  he  is  no  philanthropist, 
but  a  robber  and  a  coward.     Men  would  resist  him, 
women  might  do  something  to  defend  themselves,  but, 
as  children   can   do  nothing,  as  their  parents  cannot 
help  them,  and  as  the  State  is  slow  in  helping  them, 
this  rich  and  heartless  man  swoops  down  on  them  and 
robs  them  of  their  little  earnings. 

I  know  perfectly  well  that  the  working 
When  is  an     classes  are  not  the  only  classes  which 
employer       have    to    struggle    desperately    for    a 
Riving  tiiem     <^<^cent  existence.    In  our  country,  bled 
less  than  a      white  as    it    is  by   the  long-continued 
fair  wage  ?     draining  away  of  its  wealth — its   life- 
blood,     there     are     many     employers, 
especially  small  ones,  who  do  not  pay  a  proper  wage 
to  children,  and  yet  who  can  honestly  say  that  they  do 
not  make  much  profit  out  of  these  children,  but  can 
hardly  keep  their  business  afloat.     I  have  already  ex- 
plained *  what  are  the  conditions  in  which  an  employer 
may  justly  say  that  he  cannot  pay  a  proper  wage  to  his 
adult  labourers.   These  same  conditions,  and  these  alone, 
would  justify  him  in  paying  his  young  workers  less  than 
the  proportion  of  wage  which  their  work  bears  to  that 
of  adults. 

•  Lecture  II.,  pp.  33-36. 


yS  THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD. 

The  Church,  therefore,  solemnly  warns 
The  Church     individual    employers   of   their    obhga- 
'  calls  on  the     tions  to  the  children  who  work  for  them. 
State  to  protect   This,    however,    is    not    enough.      The 
child-workers,    awakening     of    individual    consciences 
cannot,  of  itself,   restrain   the   struggle 
and   scramble   of   the   modern    world    for   wealth   and 
power.     The  richer  men  grow,  the  more  easily  they 
grow  richer  still ;  the  richer  they  grow,  the  fiercer  grows 
their  thirst  of  gain  and  their  desire  to  crush  their  rivals. 
It  is  becoming  harder  and  harder  for  the  less  wealthy 
man  to  keep  his  feet  in  the  rush.    It  is  growing  harder 
and  harder  for  the  just  man  to  reconcile  his  conscience 
with  his  interests.    Nay,  though  God  often  blesses  the 
just  man  with  prosperity,  he  often  tries  him  with  mis- 
fortune.   It  is,  therefore,  absolutely  necessary  that  the 
State  should  intervene.    She  alone  has  at  her  disposal  the 
poUceman  and  the  process-server.    She  alone  can  strip 
from  the  man  who  has  grown  wealthy  on  underpaid 
children's   work  the  glamour  of  social  respectabihty. 
The   State   alone   can    curb   the    strong    and   protect 
the    weak    by   wise    and    just   laws,    firmly    admin- 
istered. 

"  When  there  is  question,"  says  Pope  Leo  XIII.,  "  of 
defending  the  rights  of  individuals,  the  poor  and  the 
helpless  have  a  right  to  special  consideration.  Those 
who  are  badly  off  must  rely  chiefly  on  the  help  of  the 
State.  It  is  for  this  reason,"  he  continues,  "  that  wage 
earners,  who  are  undoubtedly  among  the  weak  and 
necessitous  (and  which  of  them  more  than  the  child 
workers  ?)  should  be  specially  cared  for  and  protected 
by  the  Government." 

Pope  Leo  XIII.  and  our  present  Holy  Father  have 
been  incessantly  pressing  on  Cathohc  statesmen  and 
Catholic  social  workers  their  duty  of  striving,  so  that 
the  State  pass  laws,  first,  for  the  protection  of  the 
family — in  which  alone  the  young  can  be  reared  and 
trained — and  then  for  the  estabhshment  of  proper 
systems  of  apprenticeship  and  technical  training  for  the 
young.  It  will  be  our  duty  too  to  urge  the  necessity  of 
these  measures  upon  all  our  administrative  bodies,  and 


THE   CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD.  79 

especially  upon  those  in  whose  hands  the  general  interests 
of  the  country  will  lie. 
She  appeals  to       ^ut   there   is   much  of  this  work  of 
all  Christians     social  reform   which  no   State  can   do. 
to  help  the     Much  of  it  requires  human  sympathy, 
working        personal  care,  individual  attention,  kind 
children  by      speech — things  which  no  State  institu- 
social  tion   can    ever    command.     Much  of  it 

organisations,  ^.g^^^  i^^  done  only  by  works  of  Chris- 
tian charity,  enhghtened,  organised,  suiting  the  needs 
of  the  present  hour. 

The     authoritative     words     of     the 

.\.  Popes,     the     impassioned     appeals     of 

organisations    gj  j^  pg  the  initiative  of  devoted  Priests, 

flourishing    m         ,  ,i^  i        i  x         x.  ^     u     i 

other  countries.  ^^^  ^"-^  ^^^   ^^^  genms  oi  a  whole  host 

of    Catholic    laymen,    writers,    orators, 

and  organisers,  have  at  length  roused  the  energies  of 

Cathohcs  all  over  Europe  to  undertake  such  works. 

Orphanages  and  hospitals  for  the  young  are  blessed 
works  and  necessary,  but  I  do  not  speak  of  them.  I 
speak  of  works  which — I  make  bold  to  say — are  of  still 
greater  value,  works  which  will  check  the  evils  that 
prey  on  the  young  so  that  it  may  not  be  necessary  after- 
wards to  cure  or  alleviate  them.  The  care  and  cure  of 
the  little  ones  who  have  been  knocked  down  and 
trampled  on  in  the  struggle  of  life  is  a  good  work  ; 
but  a  better  one  is  to  strengthen  them  so  that  they 
may  not  fall. 

To  this  work  thousands  of  Catholic  men  and  women 
of  all  classes  of  society,  of  all  grades  of  wealth,  are 
devoting  themselves  nobly  to-day  in  other  coimtries.  To 
this  work  they  sacrifice  much  of  their  social  pleasures 
or  idle  trifling  or  well-earned  rest.  They  give  to  it  their 
time,  their  thought,  their  labour,  themselves.  They 
plan  and  form  and  keep  in  existence  scores  of  social 
works  of  various  kinds  to  preserve  family  unity,  to  save 
infant  hfe,  to  keep  the  young  off  the  streets,  to  fill  in 
the  gaps  of  their  schooling,  to  teach  them  the  virtues  of 
thrift  and  self-restraint  and  diligence  and  mutual  help, 
to  have  them  taught  useful  trades,  so  that  they  may 
grow  up  in  comfort,  and  lead  useful,  peaceful.  Christian 


8o  THE  CHURCH   AND   THE   WORKING  CHILD. 

lives.  I  shall  speak  more  of  these  social  works  in  my 
next  lecture.  They  are  the  charity  which  Christ  asks 
of  us  to-day  for  His  little  ones,  and  I  have  confidence 
that  the  kindly  and  rehgious  heart  of  Ireland  will  not 
refuse  it  to  Him. 

We   read   in    St   Matthew's    Gospel ; 
■  Christ  appeals    "  Jesus  calling  unto  Him  a  httle  child, 
['   to  us  all  to     set  him  in  the  midst  of  the  disciples," 
save  the  young,  and   then   He   bade   them   admire   the 
innocence  of  the  child  and  extolled  his 
simplicity ;  and  then  He  says  :  "  He  that  receiveth  one 
such  little  child  in  My  name,  receiveth  Me."     Then, 
as  He  reflected  on  the  sin  and  misery  that  cruel  men 
would  bring  upon  the  child.  His  words  take  on  a  certain 
fierceness  very  rare  in  Him  :  "  He  that  scandaUses  one 
of  these  little  ones,  it  were  better  for  him    that  a  mill- 
stone should  be  tied  around  his  neck  and  that  he  be 
thrown  into  the  depths  of  the  sea." 

Christ  spoke  those  words  over  the  heads  of  His  dis- 
ciples to  all  generations,  to  all  of  us. 

Can  we  resist  Christ's  appeal  to  preserve  innocent 
from  the  corruption  of  the  streets  and  safe  from  the 
dangers  of  slum  life,  that  soul  on  which  His  sacred 
eyes  gazed  with  love  ;  His  appeal  to  prevent  sorrow  and 
suffering  from  quenching  too  soon  the  gladness  that 
should  dance  in  the  child's  eyes  in  the  morning  of  life ; 
His  appeal  to  us  to  save  their  tender  httle  Umbs  from 
being  crushed  by  heavy  work,  or  wasted  by  starvation, 
or  perished  by  cold  or  frost  ? 

If  our  hearts  are  so  stony  as  to  resist  Christ's  appeal, 
well  then,  we  must  take  care  that  we  neglect  not  His 
warning !  for  in  His  words  we  can  discern  the  fury  of  the 
vengeance  with  which  He  will  visit  those  who  injure 
His  little  children. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  TRADE  UNIONS, 
STRIKES,  ETC. 

ONE  of  the  most  remarkable  pheno- 
mena   of    modern    times    is   the 
solidarity  development  among    men  of  the 

spirit  of  soHdarity.  It  is  the  spirit  which 
urges  those  whose  economic  interests  are  similar  to 
unite  for  the  protection  of  their  interests.  We  see  those 
who  are  engaged  as  labourers  in  the  same  trade,  or  in 
similar  trades,  uniting  to  defend  themselves;  and  we  see 
those  employers  who  are  engaged  in  the  same  or  in 
similar  businesses  uniting  on  their  side. 

Such  a  spirit  was  strong  and  wide 
which  was      spread  in  the  Middle  Ages,  but,  as  soli- 
mUdX^ATes     ^^"^y  (^o  ^^  anything  more  than  a  name) 
implies  a  considerable  limitation  of  in- 
dividual hberty,  it  was  opposed  to  the  whole  spirit  of  the 
great  revolution  of  thought  which  swept  over  Europe  in 
the  l8th  and  early  19th  centuries,  and  which  tended  to 
disintegrate    society,    and    make    its    individual    units 
independent  of  each  other. 

The  spirit  of  union  is   again   growing 

stowSg  ^^^^-  ^^^^  ^^^^^^^  ^^^^  probably  see  the 
nation  grouped  in  professional  associa- 
tions and  vast  federations  of  such  associations,  in  presence 
of  which  the  traditional  forms  of  government — Monarchy, 
Republic,  Czardom — will  play  an  insignificant  part. 
Social  classes  and  corporate  interests,  rather  than  local 
and  individual  interests,  will  probably  be  represented  in 
the  Parliaments  of  the  future. 

Organisation         ^^^  ^^^Y  case  this  growth  of  solidarity, 

whether  of      on  the  side    of    labour  or  of  capital — 

labourers  or  of  whether  we  like  it  or  not — is  certainly 

employers  not    not  essentially  wrong.     The  true  enemies 

wrong.  of  Christian  philosophy  to-day  are  not 

those  who  unite  for   their  common  interests.    Those 

S 


82  THE  CHURCH   AND   TRADE   UNIONS. 

who  SO  unite  are,  in  so  far,  the  true  heirs  of  the  old 
Cathohc  traditions,  the  true  upholders  of  natural  law  and 
natural  right.  Those  who  persist — if  any  yet  persist — in 
seeing  in  the  massing  and  organisation  of  labour  some- 
thing wrong  or  even  something  abnormal  are  completely 
out  of  harmony  with  the  spirit  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

The  words  of  Pope  Leo  XIII.  in  his 
It  is  sanctioned  Encyclical  are  perfectly  clear.  "It  is 
by  the  Church,  with  pleasure,"  he  says,  "  We  witness 
that  everywhere  are  being  formed  socie- 
ties consisting  of  workmen  alone,  or  consisting  of  workmen 
and  employers.  It  is  to  be  desired  that  their  number 
may  increase  and  their  efhcacy  grow  stronger."  And 
the  present  Pope  Pius  X.  repeats  the  same  teaching. 
"  What  institutions  are  to  be  founded  ?  Your  thoughtful 
charity  will  decide,"  he  says.  "  Those  which  are  called 
Unions  appear  to  Us  to  be  of  most  timely  use.  We  re- 
commend you  to  take  a  special  care  of  their  foundation 
and  their  development."  Again,  one  of  the  greatest 
Cardinals  of  the  day,  speaking  to  a  meeting  of  workmen 
only  two  years  ago,  says — "  Workmen  have  the  duty  of 
uniting  to  discuss  their  trade  interests  and  of  defending 
them.  Your  reUgion,  ray  good  friends,"  he  says,  "  does 
not  force  you  to  submit  to  the  hardships  of  your  condition 
without  trying  to  render  them  more  bearable.  Workmen 
do  not  understand  their  duty  in  the  matter  of  social  action . 
You  wish  to  improve  your  condition.  It  is  not  ideas 
or  wishes  that  will  help  you.  To  these  you  must  join 
action  through  your  Unions.  You  must  aid  yourselves." 
The  words  I  am  about  to  quote  are  not  those  of  an  irre- 
sponsible demagogue,  but  those  of  a  great  Cathohc 
Archbishop  instructing  his  flock.  "  Workmen,"  he  said, 
"  unite.  It  is  your  right.  It  is  your  duty.  No  one  can 
prevent  you  from  uniting.  He  who  opposes  your  uniting 
violates  a  natural  right,  and  commits  an  action  which  is 
contrary  to  the  principles  of  morality." 

Not  merely  do  Catholics  all  over  the  world  consider 
Unions  of  workmen  as  perfectly  normal  and  lawful 
developments  within  the  State,  but  they  regard  with 
satisfaction  the  vast    Federations   in    which  Unions  of 


THE   CHURCH    AND   TRADE   UNIONS.  83 

the  same  or  of  connected  trades  band  together,  and 
they  consider  these  Federations  as  another  step  in 
advance  towards  social  peace. 

Snch  TTnions         The  tendency  of  those  whose  interests 
dictated  by  a     a-^e  similar  to  unite  is  a  natural,  universal, 
right  and       spontaneous    tendency.       Man,    experi- 
natoral  iastlnot  encing  his  own  weakness,  is  urged  by  a 
dictate  ot  nature  to  join  himself  to  his  fellow.     From  this 
dictate  arises  Civil  Society,  and  within  the  pale  of  Civil 
Society  various  other  associations  of  more  limited  scope. 
Unity  of  profession  is  a  natural  bond.     The  parish, 
the  district,  the  county  create  certain  bonds  between 
thosv^  who  dwell  within  their  borders.    The  fact  of  people 
thus  dwelling  near  each  other  estabhshes  a  certain  com- 
munity of  interest ;  and  the  representation  in  Parliament 
of  such  territorial  divisions  is  an  acknowledgment  and  a 
ratification  of  such  community  of  interest.     Now,  is  not 
unity  of  occupation  a  similar    bond,    nay,  a  strongei 
and   more   natural   bond   than   any   founded   on    mere 
locahty  ?     Is  not  our  trade,  our  business  a  more  intimate 
part  of  our  social  existence  than  the  place  where  we 
live  ?     We  may  change  our  dwelling  place — we  often  do 
— -but  we  rarely  change  our  trade  or  business.     When, 
therefore,  there  exists  a  number  of  individuals  absorbed 
by  the  same  daily  occupations,  exposed  to  the  same 
dangers,    opposed   by   the    same    forces,    having    the 
same  interests,   having  a   character  and  mentahty  and 
habits  formed  by  the  same  early  training  and  influences, 
made  like  to  each  other  not  in  something  merely    ex- 
terior but  in  something  which  is  as  a  second  nature, 
the  association  of  such  people  is  a  natural  and  spon- 
taneous union  in  harmony  with  all  their  instincts. 

The  right  of  those  who  have  common  interests  to 
defend  them  by  common  action  is  not  a  right  which 
any  human  law  can  give  or  take  away.  It  is  inherent 
in  society.  It  is  independent  of  any  positive  law. 
Law  has  no  power  over  it,  no  power  except  the  power 
to  recognise  it.  "  The  Civil  Society,"  says  Pope  Leo 
XIIL,  "  which  would  forbid  the  formation  of  private 
societies  would    be  attacking  itself,   for  all    societies. 


54  THE  CHURCH  AND   TRADE   UNIONS. 

public    and   private,    arise  from    the    same    principle, 
the  natural  sociability  of  men." 

Our  industrial  system  is  in  anarchy ; 

Unions  alone     the  relations  of  employers  to  each  other, 

seem  capable    ^^^^  ^f  workmen  to  each  other,  and  the 

neac/toSftv  relations  of   employers  to  workmen  are 

not  ordered  to  the  general    good,  and 

Unionism  alone  seems  capable  of  so  ordering  it. 

At  present  Capital  and  Labour  are  acting  as  if  they 
had  different  interests,  and,  without  Unions,  there  would 
exist  no  machinery  to  secure  the  common  interests  of  both. 
If,  however.  Capital  on  the  one  hand,  and  Labour  on  the 
other,  be  organised,  they  will  be  two  powerful  institu- 
tions, respecting  each  other,  giving  and  taking,  settling 
their  differences  in  harmony,  throwing  light  on  each  other's 
interests,  each  working  for  the  advantage  of  both. 

Between  all  contending  parties  negotiations  are  neces- 
sary, and  for  negotiation  some  order  must  exist  on  both 
sides.  Surely  if  the  two  great  powers  of  Capital  and 
Labour  were  organised  and  stood  face  to  face,  each 
knowing  the  other's  strength,  each  measuring  the  other's 
resources,  each  fearing  the  other's  determination,  above 
all,  each  recognising  clearly  its  opponent's  prosperity  to 
be  necessary  for  its  own  welfare — that  in  fact  a  victory 
could  be  bought  only  at  the  cost  of  almost  utter  de- 
struction— surel}^  then  there  would  be  more  chance  of 
abiding  peace  than  there  is  to-day,  when  society  is 
engaged  in  a  vast  disordered  struggle,  each  one  fighting 
desperately  for  his  own  hand,  each  one  looking  for 
some  one  weaker  than  himself  on  whom  to  prey. 

Strong  organizations  of  Labour  and  of  Capital  are  the 
only  institutions  that  give  the  remotest  hope  of  bringing 
back  peace  to  the  world. 

They  afford         ^^^   ^^^    ^^^^    place,    they,   and    they 

a  means  of      alone,  seem  likely  to  provide  adequate 

settling  the      machinery    for    the    establishment    of 

conflicts  between  collective    labour    contracts.      Without 

Capital  and      such    associations    the    labour    contract 

Labour,         ig  for  the  most  part  merely  the  exterior 

consent  of  the  workman  to  the  emploj^er's  conditions, 


THE   CHURCH  AND   TRADE   UNIONS.  85 

a  forced  consent  causing  irritation  and  often  not  felt 
to  be  binding.  For  any  fair  and  lasting  contract  there 
must  be  a  certain  balance  of  power  between  the  con- 
tracting parties,  and  that  can  be  secured  only  by  the 
forces  of  Labour  and  Capital  being  organised.  These 
can  then  meet,  discuss  and  negotiate.  Such  collective 
agreements  are  like  treaties  between  nations,  not  pro- 
vocations to  war,  but  securities  for  peace.  They  leave 
Capital  its  proper  freedom  in  all  that  regards  the  carrying 
on  of  the  business,  in  the  choice  of  machinery,  of 
materials,  methods  of  manufacture,  markets,  and  they 
restrain  that  liberty  only  in  so  far  as  freedom  means 
injustice.  Such  collective  agreements  will  free  the 
conscientious  employer  from  the  choice  forced  on  him 
by  his  unscrupulous  competitors — the  choice  between 
his  conscience  and  his  interests ;  they  will  free  him  from 
much  of  the  tyranny  of  supply  and  demand,  they  will 
arrange  common  customs  of  sale,  a  common  attitude 
with  regard  to  workmen  and  buyers,  they  will  help  him 
to  regain  the  art  of  the  master-workman  of  old — that 
of  becoming  rich  without  ruining  others. 

Give  labourers  strong  Unions  which  will  enable  them 
to  make  fair  terms,  and  they  will  enjoy  true  liberty  of 
contract,  they  will  be  too  strong  to  be  driven  to  accept 
famine  wages  or  iniquitous  conditions  of  work,  they 
will  not  have  the  perpetual  goad  of  wretched  homes  and 
starving  wives  to  drive  them  to  revolution. 

Such  collective  contracts,  which  have  become  very 
common  in  the  more  highly  skilled  trades,  have  been, 
I  know,  often  violated. 

Yet  it  must  be  remembered  that  man's  mental 
attitude  is  not  changed  in  a  day.  In  the  transition  from 
an  epoch  when  individual  force  stood  for  right  it  would 
be  indeed  strange  if  some  men  were  not  still  inclined 
to  have  recourse  to  their  old  methods  of  redress.  Though 
some  men  will  always  be  faithless,  and  collective  con- 
tracts (just  as  individual  contracts)  will  be  occasionally 
violated,  it  is  fair  to  remember  that  those  that  have 
been  broken  (in  England  for  instance)  form  an  in- 
significant minority  of  the  lo,doo  such  contracts,  which 
5* 


86  THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE    UNIONS. 

now  regulate  the  wages  and  conditions  of  work  of  nearly 
two  and  a  half  milHons  of  labouring  men. 

Beyond  the  formation  of  such  collec- 
and  offer       ^j^^  contracts,  Unions,  if  managed  with 

XStaeef  intelligence  and  inspired  by  just 
prmciples,  should  have  a  wide  sphere  of 
beneficial  influence.  They  should  play  a  great  part  in 
the  moral  and  social  life  of  the  community.  They 
should  have  an  excellent  educative  effect  on  their 
members,  developing  in  them  a  spirit  of  self-sacrifice, 
self-respect,  foresight,  responsibility.  They  should  force 
their  members  to  study  the  general  state  of  their  trades, 
and  bring  clearly  home  to  them  that  there  are  bounds 
beyond  which  their  thoughtless  claims  would  lead  to 
their  own  ruin. 

Unions  have  in  many  countries  founded  a  whole  host 
of  institutions  of  incalculable  benefit,  not  merely  to  the 
trade  which  founded  them,  but  to  society  in  general ; 
technical  schools,  laboratories  for  research,  libraries, 
statistical  and  scientific  journals,  labour  exchanges, 
insurance  funds,  loan  funds,  clubs  of  various  kinds,  and 
co-operative  institutions.  In  France  alone  there  are 
10,000  such  subsidiary  institutions  founded  and  kept  in 
existence  by  the  Unions. 

It  will,  no  doubt,  be  said  that  this 

Though  many    conception  of  a  Union  as  an  institution 
Unions  are      making  for  peace  is  not  the  conception 

Socialistic  in    ^f  ^^  which  is  most  commonly  present 

arrnot  ""  ^o-day  in  the  pubhc  mind. 
inherently  bad.  -"-^  ^^  perfectly  true  that  many  Unions 
to-day,  however  unexceptionable  may  be 
their  right  to  exist,  are  as  a  fact  leading  to  Revolution. 
Under  the  influence  of  Socialistic  principles  they  are 
more  intent  on  fomenting  class  hatred  and  violent 
disturbance  than  on  securing  a  peaceful  conciliation  of 
the  various  interests  in  the  State. 

This  cannot  be  denied.  Yet  it  is  fair  to  remember 
that  Unionism  has  as  yet  incorporated  only  a  small 
minority  (nowhere  more  than  a  fourth  part)  of  the 
labouring  class,  and  that  like  all  minorities  conscious 


THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE    UNIONS.  87 

of  vigour  and  of  a  future  and  not  yet  fully  recognised 
as  a  legitimate  power,  they  are  naturally  given  to 
noise  and  violence.  They  feel  their  strength,  but  are 
often  not  matured  enough  to  feel  their  responsibilities. 
They  are  as  organisms  growing  and  pushing  their  way 
in  the  body  politic  which  has  not  yet  got  accom- 
modated to  them.  Besides,  it  must  be  said  that  their 
excessive  love  of  violent  methods  is  not  all  their  fault.. 
It  must  be  admitted  that  many  of  the  improvements 
wrought  in  the  state  of  the  labouring  class — improve- 
ments which  everyone  now  recognises  to  have  been 
necessary  and  demanded  by  justice — had  to  be  extorted 
by  strikes  or  the  threat  of  strikes. 

In  any  case,  the  violence  of  Labour  Unions,  their 
misuse  of  power,  and  their  exti^avagant  pretensions  do 
not  justify  us  in  condemning  them  as  unjust  in  principle. 
Even  on  the  Continent,  in  Italy,  France  and  Germany, 
where  they  are  more  deeply  imbued  with  SociaUst  prin- 
ciples, and  where  they  have  acted  with  greater  license 
and  violence  than  in  these  countries,  CathoHc  prelates 
and  Catholic  writers  feel  no  more  inchned  to  condemn 
them  as  essentially  unjust,  or  to  lament  their  existence 
as  abnormal,  than  they  feel  inchned  to  deny  the  right  of 
a  wicked  man  to  exist.  Let  me  quote  for  you  the  words 
of  Archbishop  Ketteler,  whom  Pope  Leo  XIII.  once 
spoke  of  as  his  "  master "  in  social  science.  "  The 
spirit  of  association,"  he  says,  "  rests  on  a  principle 
of  Divine  order,  and  is  essentially  just,  even  though 
the  men  who  form  such  associations  often  do  not 
recognise  God's  authority  and  wrest  these  associations 
to  evil  ends." 

It  is  true  that  just  as  no  individual 

Attitude  of  the    ^^g^j^  fulfils  his  proper  functions  in  life, 

Cnurcn  towards  ^^  ^^^  attain  to  real  happiness,  unless 

he  conforms  to  the  laws  of  righteousness, 

so,  neither  can  associations,  whether  of  employers  or  of 

labourers,  perform  any  real  service  to    society  unless 

they  too  conform  to  the  eternal  laws  of  justice  and  moral 

conduct. 

The  Church,  therefore,  is  within  her  sphere  when  she 


88         THE  CHURCH  AND  TRADE  UNIONS. 

dictates  the  moral  principles  which  such  associations 
must  observe  in  their  conduct,  and  when  she  lays  down 
the  moral  conditions  on  which  she  will  allow  her 
children  to  join  such  associations. 

The  Church  has  her  own  proper  sphere,  the  teaching 
of  the  Gospel  and  the  conduct  of  souls  to  their  eternal 
home.  Institutions  of  the  economic  order,  such  as 
Trade  Unions,  mutual  aid  societies,  and  the  rest,  which 
have  for  their  object  the  organisation  of  labour  or  the 
appropriate  distribution  of  wealth,  do  not  fall  within  the 
sphere  of  the  Church.  They  are  of  the  civil,  not  of  the 
religious,  order.  They  have  an  independent  position 
with  regard  to  the  Church. 

Still,  all  such  societies  must  necessarily  formulate 
principles  of  action  which  may  or  may  not  conform  to 
the  moral  law  ;  and  the  Church  in  approving  or  condemn- 
ing such  principles  is  only  doing  her  duty  of  teaching 
God's  law  to  mankind.  In  particular  the  varying  phases 
of  the  modern  industrial  struggle  are  perpetually  con- 
fronting associations,  both  those  of  employers  and  those 
of  labourers,  with  problems  that  are  inextricably  bound 
up  with  the  moral  law.  For  instance,  questions  concern- 
ing wages,  contracts,  strikes,  prices  are  often  not  questions 
of  tactics  to  be  settled  as  expediency  suggests,  but  are 
questions  which  affect  the  consciences  of  millions  of  men. 
Unions  are  forced  to  form  with  regard  to  their  own 
members,  or  to  other  Unions,  or  to  the  general  public, 
codes  of  law  and  principles  of  conduct,  which  may  or 
may  not  be  subversive  of  the  eternal  principles  of  right 
and  wrong. 

and  in  Hence  arose  a  very  serious  question 

particular       for  the  Church.     Could  Cathohcs  join 

towards  ron-  non-Cathohc  Unions  ?  To  this  question 
Catholic  Unions,  the  Church  could  only  give  one  answer. 
She  could  not  view  with  indifference  her  children  entering 
associations  in  which  their  faith  or  their  moral  outlook 
might  be  perverted.  The  Holy  See  therefore  encouraged 
and  urged  Cathohcs,  and  Bishops  and  priests  repeated 
the  Pope's  encouragement  and  exhortations  on  a  thousand 
platforms,  yes,  and  in  a  thousand  pulpits,   to    form 


THE   CHURCH   AND    tRADE    UNIONS.  89 

Catholic  Unions;  and  such  CathoHc  Unions  now  exist 
strong  and  vigorous  in  nearly  every  country  on  the 
Continent.  In  Germany  there  are  300,000  men  in  the 
professedly  Christian  unions,  one-third  of  all  the  Catholic 
workmen  in  the  German  Empire.  In  Austria  there  are 
100,000  in  the  Cathohc  Unions,  in  Belgium  71,000,  in 
Switzerland  12,000.  It  is  not  surprising  to  find  that 
these  Catholic  Unions  have  been  crowned  with  signal 
success  in  winning  their  rights,  for  they  take  their  stand 
on  more  sohd  principles;  they  act  with  a  deeper  sense  of 
responsibihty  than  other  associations ;  they  inspire 
employers  with  a  greater  confidence  that  they  will  keep 
their  agreements ;  and  the  idealism  inherent  in  all 
religious  truth,  the  order  and  discipHne,  the  unselfishness 
and  perseverance  which  characterise  all  religious  move- 
ments, give  to  Catholic  Unions  a  solidarity  and  en- 
thusiasm and  efficiency  which  those  pursuing  mere 
expediency  can  never  rival. 

Of  course  if  a  CathoHc  Union  finds  itself  in  agreement 
with  a  Socialist  or  a  non-religious  Union  co-operation  with 
such  is  not  unlawful.  Moreover  there  are  places  where 
Cathohcs  are  not  numerous  enough  to  form  effective 
Unions.  If  in  such  places  there  exist  other  Unions,  whose 
doctrines  and  acts  are  not  contrary  to  Christian  prin- 
ciples, the  Holy  See  tolerates  her  children  entering  them 
under  certain  safeguards  and  conditions. 

This  subject  has  a  very  real  importance 
H,  "f^^"  for  us  in  Ireland  to-day.  Ireland  is  not 
threatening  ^^  industrial  country,  the  majority  of 
Irish  unions      ,       ,  ,  ,    •        -^    ■     ■,,       1      txt 

her  labourers  bemg  agricultural.  More- 
over siie  IS  a  very  poor  country  and  therefore  has  a  com- 
paratively small  demand  for  the  products  of  skilled 
labour.  Lastly,  partly  as  a  result  of  the  dehberate 
crushing  of  our  industries,  and  partly  owing  to  our 
lack  of  the  well-ordered  charity  which  should  urge  us 
to  help  our  fellow-countrymen  before  others,  we  bring 
from  other  countiies  an  extravagant  amount  of  the  in- 
dustrial products  which  we  should  normally  manufacture 
at  home.  The  consequence  is  that  our  skilled  labourers 
are  abnormally  few  in  proportion  to  the  unskilled  and 


90  THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE   UNIONS'. 

feel  themselves  too  weak  in  number  to  form  independent 
associations.     They  therefore  join  English  Unions. 

This  necessity — if  it  is  a  necessity — is  to  be  deplored 
from  the  point  of  view  of  nationality,  and  not  less  from 
the  point  of  view  of  religion.  It  is  to  be  feared  that 
many  of  the  great  British  Unions  are  deeply  imbued  with 
Socialism,  and  that  they  hold  principles  and  advocate 
courses  of  conduct  of  which  Irish  workmen  cannot,  as 
good  Cathohcs,  approve.  Irish  tradesmen  and  employees 
have,  I  hope,  learned  the  lesson  of  their  recent  rough 
experience  when  in  the  Railway  strike  they  were  made 
the  catspaw  of  the  British  Unions.  They  should  reahse 
the  unnaturalness,  the  foolishness,  and  the  unpatriotic 
character  of  such  alhances.  It  is  to  be  hoped  sincerely 
that  whatever  political  changes  are  impending  may 
result  in  independent  Irish  associations  which,  knit 
together  by  the  triple  cord  of  material  interests,  national 
feehng  and  rehgious  beUef,  may  introduce  an  era  of 
prosperity  and  peace  into  Irish  industrial  life. 

A  few  words  on  the  terrible  and 
Strikes.  deUcate  subject  of  strikes  may  not  be 
here  amiss,  as  showing  how  irreconcilable  are  the  prin- 
ciples which  guide  some  modern  Unions  with  those  which 
should  inspire  Siny  Christian  association;  as  showing, 
too,  how  difficult  and  dehcate  are  the  moral  questions 
which  may  have  at  any  time  to  be  decided  in  labour 
conflicts. 

For  many  Unions  to-day  a  strike   is 

False  notions  j-^^gj-ely  an  episode  in  the  war  between 
the  classes,  a  declaration  of  open  hos- 
tihties,  to  be  made  whenever  a  good  opportunity  occurs  ; 
a  kind  of  prehminary  manoeuvre  preparing  the  battahons 
of  the  people  for  the  universal  strike  which  is  some  day 
to  destroy  the  present  system  of  society. 

For  the  Christian  Union  a  strike  is 

f  ^  "ixikT     something  very  different.    It  is  a  declara- 

^  ^   "     tion  of  war,  if  you  will,  but  of  an  economic 

war  to  be;  aeclared  only  as  a  last  resort,  for  a  just  cause 

and  to  be  carried  on  without  violence. 

Every  man  is  by  nature  free  to  give  or  to  withhold 


THE  CHURCH  AND  TRADE  UNIONS.        Ql 

his  labour,  just  as  every  man  is  by  nature  free  to  offer 
or  not  to  offer  employment.  However,  just  as  an 
employer  may  in  a  given  case  (e.g.,  Where  the  Worker 
Would  be  exposed  to  suffer  grave  inconvenience,  etc.)  be 
bound,  in  justice  as  Well  as  in  charity,  not  to  dismiss 
his  Workman  without  a  sufficient  reason,  so  the  Workman 
in  a  given  case  (e.g.,  when  his  action  Would  entail  grave 
inconvenience  to  his  employer)  may  be  bound,  in  both 
justice  and  charity,  not  to  withhold,  without  a  sufficient 
reason,  his  continued  services  from  his  employer. 
The  right,  however,  of  the  Workman  to  withhold  his 
work,  whether  alone  or  in  concert  with  others,  can 
be  justly  exercised  if  a  sufficiently  grave  reason  exists, 
just  as,  on  the  other  hand,  an  employer  can,  if  he  have 
a  sufficiently  grave  reason,  dismiss  a  man  from  his 
employment.  The  labourer  will  have  this  sufficiently 
grave  reason  for  discontinuing  his  services  if  the 
employer  persists  in  withstanding  the  claims  which 
the  worker,  or  the  body  of  workers  to  which  he  belongs, 
has  a  right  to  insist  on.  Man,  and  bodies  of  men,  must 
have  some  natural  defence  against  injury  and  some 
means  of  enforcing  their  just  demands.  For  this 
reason  the  right  to  strike  is  a  natural  one.  A  strike 
may  be  just  and  even  a  duty. 

Now,  if  an  individual  workman  acting  singly  urge 
his  claims  upon  his  employer  he  will  most  generally 
fail.  But  if  many  such  workmen  combine  in  a  strong 
Union,  and  thus  can  threaten  a  simultaneous  ceasing 
of  work,  they  can  oppose  to  the  power  of  Capital  the 
power  of  concerted  numbers. 

The  right  to  strike  under  certain  conditions  can  no  more 
be  denied  the  workman  than  his  right  to  unite.  At 
the  same  time  it  is  a  matter  of  concern  that  many  work- 
men, even  those  professing  to  be  CathoUcs,  do  not  seem 
to  realise  the  heavy  responsibilities  which  such  a  right 
involves. 

It  is  not  an  absolute  right,  to  be  exer- 
i   ^  *  jyj        ciscd  at  any  time.     It  is  a  relative  right 
conditioned     by    duties     of     prudence, 
charity,  humanity,  justice. 


92         THE  CHURCH  AND  TRADE  UNIONS. 

Its  cause  Iri  the  first  place  it  cannot  be  exercised 

must  be  a       without  a  just  cause.     It  cannot,  for  in- 
just  one        stance,  be  exercised  in  order  to  extort 
a  wage  which  would  be  unjust. 

Not  merely  must   the  object   of  the 

Mriou*s?ne.     ?^^^^®  ^^  ^^^^  '  ^^  "^^^^^  ^^  ^  weighty  ob- 
ject, a  very  weighty  object,  proportioned 

to   the   sufferings  and  risks  which  are  incurred  by  the 

terrible  decision  of  declaring  a  strike.    Strikes  are  a  true 

"plague  to  society,"  to  use  Pope  Leo's  words  about  them. 

They  mostly  fail — it  is  said  that  60  per  cent,  fail — and, 

when  they  fail,  they  inflict  severe  and  permanent  losses 

upon  the  workers. 

In  any  case,  whether  they  fail  or  not,  they  foster 
a  chronic  spirit  of  ill-will  between  the  classes ;  they 
are  often  the  occasion  of  violent  and  lawless  out- 
breaks, hard  to  restrain  among  unemployed  and  excited 
men  ;  they  cause  appalling  suffering  and  anxiety  to 
multitudes  of  innocent  women  and  children ;  they 
seriously  inconvenience  the  public,  they  interfere  with 
trade  and  sometimes  drive  it  to  other  countries.  It 
is  only  right  reason  that  such  misery  and  disturbance 
and  harm  should  not  be  brought  on  society  without  the 
very  gravest  cause. 

In  this  connection,  however,  it  is  only  fair  to  remember 
that  just  as  an  incident,  trifling  in  itself,  may  involve  some 
principle  important  enough  to  justify  a  State  in  un- 
chaining the  horrors  of  war,  so  some  trifling  incident, 
some  unjust  dismissal  for  instance,  might  possibly — 
though  rarely-  justify  recourse  to  the  supreme  arbitra- 
ment of  a  strike. 
_,         , ,  Just  as  a  declaration    of   war,  owing 

™!  o^wt*  to  the  fearful  calamities  and  sufferings 
reasonaole        1  •  i    ^u  ^        ^        x  -i    • 

chance  of       which  the  war  is  certain  to  entail,   is 

success  unlawful     whenever     there    is     not     a 

reasonable    prospect    of    success,    so    a 

body  of  workmen  who,   without  a  well-founded  hope 

of   success   expose  themselves    their   families  and   the 

general  public  to  the  certain  suffering  and  inconvenience 

of  a  strike,  are  acting  unlawfully. 


THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE    UNIONS.  93 

Another  condition,  evidently  necessary 

and  must      [j^  order  that  a  strike  be  lawful,  yet  a 

be  a  last       condition   often   not   compHed  with,   is 

resource.        ^^^^  every  other  means  of  ending  the 

conflict  should  be  seriously  tried  before  recourse  be  had 

to  such  a  terrible  weapon  of  defence. 

This  need  not  necessarily  mean  that  warning  must 
be  always  given  before  the  formal  declaration  of  a 
strike.  Such  a  warning  is  generally  equitable  in  order 
to  avoid  needless  loss  to  the  employer,  but  if  the 
employer  be  acting  unjustly,  and  cannot  be  brought 
to  observe  his  just  obligations  by  the  peaceful  methods 
of  negotiation,  etc.,  his  employees  may  be  justified  in 
striking  without  further  v/arning. 

Then,  again,  a  workman  is  bound  in 
It  must  not  be    justice  not  to  strike  work  until  the  time 
in  violation  of    agreed  to  in  his  contract  have  elapsed. 
a  just  contract.   He  would  not,  however,  be  acting  sin- 
fully in  so  quitting  his  work  if  the  contract 
were  radically  invalid  ;   for  instance,   if  the  wages  to 
which  he  had  been  forced  to  consent  were  so  low  as 
to  be  unjust.     Neither  would  his  ceasing  to  work  be 
wrong   if   the   employer   by   unjust   treatment   of   him 
were  to  forfeit  the  right  to  the  fulfilment  of  the  contract ; 
nor  if,   by  continuing  to  work  he  would  be  exposing 
himself    at    the   hands   of    his   companions   to    serious 
personal  danger  or  inconvenience. 

The    question,    however,    on    which 
It  must  be      Catholic    principles    are    most    directly 
carried  on  by    opposed  to  the  principles  of  too  many 
]ust  mean.s.      t-T  •  •     i-i.  i-         r   ^.i. 

Unions   IS    the    question  of   the   means 

which  may  be  employed  in  carrying  on  the  strike. 

.A.  man  may  never  violate  the  strict 
not  be  used  "^^^  °^  another.  Therefore  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  employer's  materials  or 
machinery  is  never  lawful.  It  is  unlawful  also  to  use 
violence  in  repelling  those  who  wish  to  take  the  strikers' 
places.  The  State  uses  violence  and  armed  force  in 
punishing  malefactors  or  in  suppressing  disorder,  but 
in  so  doing  she  strikes  those  who  by  their  crimes  have 


94  THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE    UNIONS. 

forfeited  their  right  to  impunity.  A  private  individual 
may  in  self-defence  strike  down  the  ruffian  who  attempts 
his  life,  but  in  so  doing  he  kills  one  who  by  his  crime  has 
forfeited  his  right  to  safety.  But  the  workman  on  strike 
who  uses  bodily  violence  against  those  who  wish  to 
replace  him  is  using  violence  against  those  who  in  most 
cases  are  doing — as  far  as  justice  is  concerned — what 
they  have  a  perfect  right  to  do.  Such  men  who  offer 
to  take  the  places  of  the  strikers  may  be  acting  most 
gi'ievously  against  charity  in  acting  as  they  do,  they 
may  be  breaking  the  solemn  promises  they  had  given 
their  comrades,  or — as  is  perhaps  most  often  the  case 
— they  may  be  merely  poor  men  more  in  need  of  wages 
than  the  strikers,  but,  in  most  cases,  they  are  not 
acting  against  justice,  and  therefore  cannot  be  repelled 
with  violence. 

The  reasonableness  of  this  will  appear  more  clearly 
in  the  light  of  an  example.  A  very  wealthy  man  comes 
into  a  small  country  town.  He  wishes  for  some  reason 
or  another  to  get  the  complete  monopoly  of  trade  in  the 
town,  and  he  proceeds  to  undersell  all  the  other  shop- 
keepers of  the  place.  He  may  be  doing  this  through  some 
spite  against  the  shopkeepers  of  that  particular  place,  he 
may  be  sinning  most  grievously  against  charity  and 
laying  up  Hell's  torments  for  himself  by  so  acting,  but, 
after  all,  he  owns  his  goods,  he  has  the  right  to  sell  them 
cheaply,  and  precisely  because  he  is  not  acting  against 
justice  the  shopkeepers,  though  they  are  justified  in 
defending  themselves  in  other  ways,  have  not  the  right 
to  use  violence  in  defending  themselves  against  him ; 
they  are  not  justified  in  attacking  his  person  or  in  wreck- 
ing his  shop  with  sticks  and  stones. 

It  might  occasionally  happen  that  such  men,  pro- 
fessional strike-breakers,  etc.,  would  be  acting  against 
justice.  This  would  be  the  case,  for  instance,  if,  not 
being  themselves  in  grave  need,  they  professed  their 
willingness  to  take  the  place  of  the  strikers  for  less 
than  a  living  wage,  or  to  submit  to  other  unjust  con- 
ditions of  work.  Yet  even  in  such  a  case  violence  is 
not  permissible  to  the  strikers.    The  use  of  violence. 


THE   CHURCH   AND    TRADE    UNIONS.  95 

except  in  the  case  of  self-defence,  is  not  permissible 
to  private  individuals  or  to  private  associations  (such 
as  are  Unions,  Federations,  etc.),  but  only  to  the 
supreme  authority  of  the  State. 

It  may  be  urged  that  the  strikers  are  in  such  cases 
acting  in  self-defence,  that  their  rights  to  continue  in 
their  jobs  are  being  unjustly  attacked  by  the  strike- 
breakers, and  that  therefore  they  are  justified  in 
having  recourse  to  violent  methods  of  defence.  This 
plea,  however,  is  not  valid.  The  right  of  a  man  to 
his  job  is  not  a  strict  right  in  the  sense  in  which  a  man 
has  a  strict  right  to  defend  his  person  or  his  property 
from  physical  attack.  For  this  reason,  and  also  because 
the  evils  of  public  disturbance,  riots,  etc.,  far  outweigh 
any  advantages  that  could  possibly  accrue  from  the 
use  of  violence  in  such  cases,  it  is  not  lawful  for  the 
strikers  to  defend  themselves  by  violence. 

The  men  who  offer  to  take  the  place  of  strikers  are 
acting  in  a  way  calculated  to  render  vain  and  fruitless 
the  sacrifices  and  sufferings  and  risks  faced  by  the  strikers. 
All  the  same  to  repel  them  by  violence  is  to  do  wrong, 
and  one  can  never  do  wrong  in  order  that  good  may  come 
of  it.    The  end  does  not  justify  the  means. 

You  may  ask  what  is  the  use  of  acknowledging  a  right 
to  strike  if  the  right  to  prevent  others  from  taking  the 
strikers'  places  is  not  recognised  too  ?  I  answer  that  the 
strikers  have  the  right  of  defending  their  jobs  but 
not  the  right  to  use  violence  for  that  purpose.  They 
have  other  means,  peaceful  means,  at  their  disposal, 
moral  suasion,  agitation,  appeals  to  public  opinion, 
and    also    the   method    of    "  peaceful  picketing." 

Indeed,   all    experience    proves    that 
Peaceful        ^^^  peaceful  methods,  the  just  methods, 

methods  are     are   also   the   most  efficacious  methods 

the  most       of   carrying  on    a    strike.      They  win 

efllcacious.      for  the  strikers — provided  the  strike  be 

a    justifiable    one — the    sympathy,  the 

respect  and  the  admiration  of  the  general  public,  and 

public    opinion    in    a    very    powerful    (but    curiously 

intangible)  way  goes  far  to  make  or  mar  the  success 


g6  THE   CHURCH    AND   TRADE    UNIONS. 

of  strikes.  Peaceful  means,  too,  prove  far  better  than 
violence — which  is  the  weapon  of  the  weak — the 
strength  and  discipHne  of  the  strike  organisation.  They 
do  not  exasperate  the  employers  or  render  them 
more  obstinate.  They  thus  do  more  at  once  to  induce 
and  to  force  the  employers  to  come  to  terms. 

Violence,  on  the  other  hand,  is  rarely  of  any  effect. 
It  invariably  ahenates  the  good  will  of  the  public  even 
when  the  pubhc  at  the  outset  considers  the  claims  of  the 
strikers  to  be  reasonable.  It  almost  always  brings 
in  the  use  of  the  armed  forces  of  the  State  which  is  in 
duty  bound  to  repress  all  disturbances  of  the  public  peace. 

If,  however,  the  suggestion  (which  most  Catholic 
Writers  approve)  were  adopted,  namely,  that  the 
members  of  each  craft  should  be  legally  bound  to 
belong  to  some  Union,  which  would  have  the  form 
and  legal  status  of  an  incorporated  Society,  the  in- 
terests of  the  individual  workers  in  each  craft,  and 
the  interests  of  each  craft  and  of  industry  at  large 
would  be  fully  secured,  and  the  very  harassing  difficulty 
of  the  "  blackleg  "  or  "  scab "  would  be  almost 
altogether  obviated. 

A  "sympathetic  strike"  is  one  which 
«'  th  H   "  ^^  declared  by  some  body  of  labourers 

^^™tcike^  ^  ^^*^  ^  ^'^^^  *^  supporting  the  claims 
of  other  labourers.  It  is  plain  that  the 
question  of  its  lawfulness  is  an  extremely  serious  one.  If 
the  doctrine  which  holds  it  to  be  lawful  be  understood 
in  a  universal  sense,  viz.,  that  any  body  of  men  has 
the  unconditional  right  and  even  duty  of  declaring  a 
strike  in  order  to  support  the  just  quarrel  of  any  other 
body,  the  doctrine  is  subversive  of  society,  and  spells 
ruin  and  suffering  for  all  classes  in  the  State,  for  workers 
employers  and  the  outside  public.  At  any  given 
moment  there  may  be  in  some  place  or  another 
some  body  of  workers  out  on  a  just  strike.  If  all 
other  workers  were  justified  in  going  out  on  strike 
to  support  it,  then  in  the  case  of  some  small  labour 
dispute  in  a  small  country  town,  for  instance,  there 
would  be  a  general  paralysis  of  industry  and  a  general 


THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE    UNIONS.  97 

disturbance  of  the  public  peace  throughout  the  whole 
country— indeed,  throughout  the  whole  World  if  (as 
is  often  said  to  be  desirable)  the  solidarity  of  labour 
becomes  international.  In  order  that  a  few  score  of 
men  should  win  their  cause  (which  they  could  easily 
do  by  means  of  their  Union)  millions  of  men  and  women 
in  no  way  concerned  with  the  quarrel  would  be  exposed 
to  unspeakable  misery  and  suffering.  If  such  a  principle 
Were  adopted  by  the  whole  labouring  class  all  social 
intercourse  Would  be  paralysed,  all  the  advantages  of 
our  civilisation  (which  the  poor  enjoy  as  Well  as  the 
rich)  Would  be  destroyed,  all  mercantile  concerns 
(factories,  shops,  offices,  banks,  etc.)  would  have  to 
close,  the  cultivation  of  the  soil,  the  production  of  the 
wealth  on  which  rich  and  poor  alike  depend  would 
come  to  an  end.  There  would  be  universal  starvation 
and  red-handed  anarchy. 

A  universal  sympathetic  strike  could  never  be 
necessary  for  the  protection  of  the  rights  of  individual 
workers.*  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  a  cause  that 
could  justify  it.  It  would  be  a  remedy  out  of  all  pro- 
portion to  the  evil  it  would  be  intended  to  cure.  It 
would  be  as  if  a  doctor,  called  in  to  cure  some  trivial 
scratch  on  a  man's  leg  were  to  amputate  the  limb  to 
the  imminent  danger  of  the  man's  life. 

The  policy  of  "  tainted  goods "  is 
"Tainted  Goods."  really  the  same  (in  its  effects  at  least) 
as  that  of  the  sympathetic  strike.  A 
moment's  thought  will  show  that  if  adopted  in  its 
universal  sense  by  employers  or  by  employees  it  would 
rapidly  extend  the  sphere  of  any  strike  or  of  any  lock- 
out to  every  form  of  industry  in  a  country,  and  indeed 
to  every  kind  of  industry  throughout  the  world.  To 
preach  such  a  policy  as  a  universal  principle  could 
never  be  justified,  and  would  be  gravely  sinful.   Though 

*  On  the  other  hand,  everyone  now  recognises  that  the  rights 
of  the  individual  labourer  can  only  be  efficiently  guarded  by 
the  solidarity  of  his  fellow-labourers,  that  is  of  those  engaged 
in  the  same  trade  and  united  in  an  organisatiou  sufficiently 
numerous  to  protect  the  individual  members. 


gS  THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE   UNIONS, 

in  the  wild  and  whirling  rhetoric  of  industrial  conflicts 
it  is  sometimes  recommended  it  is  never  applied  in 
its  entirety.  Employers  do  not  apply  it  for  they 
see  it  would  be  madness  to  do  so.  Neither  do  the 
responsible  leaders  of  the  labouring  classes  adopt  it 
in  its  entirety,  because  they  see  that  it  would  mean 
the  destruction  of  their  own  organisations,  and  that 
it  would  ruin  the  general  interests  of  the  labouring 
classes.  Much  as  labour  leaders  speak  of  the  inter- 
national solidarity  of  labour,  it  would,  I  think,  be 
extremely  unlikely  that  the  Unions  of  England,  for 
example,  would,  in  carrying  out  the  "  tainted  goods  " 
policy,  go  out  on  strike  themselves  in  order  to  support  a 
strike  in  France  or  in  Ireland. 

The  doctrine  of  the  universal  sym- 
Is  the  Sympa-   pathetic   strike  is  utterly  indefensible. 
thetic  Strike    Does  it  therefore  follow  that   a  sym- 
ever  just?      pathetic  strike  is  never  justifiable  ?    No. 
A   sympathetic   strike,   like   any   other 
strike,  is  to  be  judged  justifiable  or  not  according  to 
the  principles  already  laid  down.     It  must  be  insisted 
on,   of  com"se,   that  the  reasons  which  would  justify 
such  an  extended  strike  would  require  to  be  of  pro- 
portionately greater  importance  and  gravity  than  those 
which  would  suffice  to  justify  an  ordinary  strike,  and 
that  proportionately  greater  efforts  should  be  exerted 
to  avert  it. 

^-It  might  be  said  that  as  a  general  rule  such  a  strike 
would  be  legitimate  only  in  the  case  where  a  body  of 
workers  is  united  by  some  real  and  strong  bond  of 
trade-interest  with  those  whose  cause  it  espouses ;  and 
this  could  generally  be  the  case  only  where  the  organisa- 
tions helping  each  other  are  employed  by  the  same 
employers  or  by  employers  in  similar  businesses,  for 
instance,  in  the  case  where  a  Union  of  masons'  labourers 
supports  the  quarrel  of  a  masons'  Union  or  of  a 
carpenters'  Union ;  or  in  the  case  where  the  workers 
on  one  railway  system  support  those  who  work  on 
another  system.  In  such  cases  men  in  helping  their 
fellows   might   have   a   reasonable   cause   for  refusing 


THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE    UNIONS.  99 

their  services  to  employers  who  are  treating  those 
fellow-labourers  with  injustice  (as  in  the  case  referred 
to  of  masons,  masons'  labourers,  carpenters),  or  they 
might  be  in  reality  defending  their  own  interests  (as 
in  the  case  of  railway-men  referred  to).  The  disturb- 
ance to  the  public  peace  Would  follow  not  as  the  direct 
result  of  their  action,  but  merely  as  an  accidental  con- 
sequence. If,  however,  a  Union  of  barbers  strikes  to 
support  the  quarrel  of,  let  us  say,  a  Union  of  carpenters, 
it  is  clear  that  the  barbers  are  merely  disturbing  the 
public  peace  in  order  that  the  carpenters  may  reap 
some  advantage  from  the  disturbance.  It  is  never 
lawful  thus  to  directly  injure  the  public  good  in  order 
thereby  to  gain  some  advantage  for  a  particular  class. 
It  may  be  argued  that  employers  who  have  no  real 
bond  of  trade  interest  with  each  other  (e.g.,  brewers, 
bakers,  cloth  manufacturers,  builders,  etc.)  sometimes 
combine  in  Federations,  and  that  therefore  each  of  the 
various  bodies  of  men  engaged  by  such  employers,  in 
coming  to  the  help  of  its  fellows  is  in  reality  defending 
itself. 

Such  a  combination  of  employers  would,  of  course, 
be  acting  unjustly  if  it  were  to  support,  by  a  general 
lock-out  or  by  financial  assistance,  any  of  its  members 
who  might  be  engaged  in  an  unjust  quarrel  with  his 
employees.  In  such  a  case  it  would  be  lawful  for  the 
Unions,  whose  just  rights  would  be  thus  challenged,  to 
combine  in  support  of  the  injured  workers,  and — of 
course  only  as  a  last  resort — declare  a  concerted  strike. 
As  has  been  said  before,  a  solid  organisation  in  Unions 
of  the  workers  of  each  trade,  and  a  sohd  banding 
together  of  such  Unions  in  Federations,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  similarly  firm  organisation  of  employers 
is  the  only  system  which  can  provide  adequate  machinery 
for  the  intelligent  discussion  of  the  interests  of  Capital 
and  Labour,  and  can  lead  to  mutual  understanding 
mutual  confidence  and  peaceful  negotiation.  Such  a 
system  alone  can  force  those  on  each  side  to  have 
regard  to  the  claims  of  justice  and  God's  law,  claims 
which  have  been  so   often  neglected   by   both  sides. 


loo  THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE    UNIONS. 

Such  a  sj^stem  alone  can  put  an  end  to  the  destructive 
conflicts  which  are  growing  more  numerous  every  day, 
and  are  inflicting  such  terrible  calamities  especially  on 
the  poor. 

Over  the  furious  battlefield  where  Capital  and  Labour 
are  struggling  there  are  two  signs  of  peace  appearing 
in  the  Heavens.  On  the  one  side,  Capital  is  coming 
to  see  that  its  old  Liber alistic  principles  (condemned 
long  ago  by  the  Church)  are  fatal  to  it.  On  the  other, 
the  more  intelligent  of  the  leaders  of  Labour  (even 
those  whose  principles  are  far  removed  from  those  of 
the  Church,  socialists,  syndicalists,  etc.)  are  getting 
afraid  of  the  awful  spirits  of  destruction  which  they 
have  summoned  up  upon  the  earth  ;  they  are  growing 
more  conscious  of  their  responsibilities,  and  in  England 
as  elsewhere  (except  sometimes  in  the  heat  of  conflict), 
they  repudiate  in  the  interests  of  Labour  itself  these 
senseless  and  violent  appeals  to  combat. 

There  are  certain  absolute  necessities 
Strikes  in  of  modern  life  such  as  gas,  water, 
public  services,  electricity,  railways,  letter  carriage,  &c., 
which  are  entrusted  to  great  public  or 
quasi-public  services.  Now  those  who  are  engaged 
in  such  services  evidently  do  not  on  that  account 
cease  to  enjoy  their  rights  as  free  men.  They,  like 
other  employees,  possess  their  natural  right  of  defence, 
the  right  that  every  man  has  to  withhold  his  labour 
given  good  cause.  Yet  owing  to  the  fact  that  their 
uninterrupted  services  are  immediately  and  absolutely 
necessary  for  the  peace  and  well-being  of  the  whole 
State,  such  men  are  bound  by  a  heavier  responsibility 
in  the  exercise  of  their  rights.  They  cannot  ignore  the 
absolute  necessities  of  the  general  public,  and  therefore 
a  more  than  ordinary  care  and  deliberation  is  incumbent 
on  them  before  they  can  be  justified  in  striking.  If 
strikes  occur  in  such  services  the  State  is  bound  to 
employ  her  forces,  even  her  armed  forces,  to  prevent 
the  suffering  and  calamities  which  would  result  to  the 
general  public.  On  the  other  hand  the  employees  of 
such  public  utility  services  have  a  right  to  be  com- 


THE   CHURCH   AND    TRADE    UNIONS.  lOl 

pensated  for  the  extra  difficulties  which  the  nature  of 
their  work  places  in  the  Way  of  the  prosecution  of  their 
rights.  The  State  is  bound  therefore  to  provide  the 
very  fullest  machinery — equitably  formed  arbitration 
boards  and  the  like — for  permanently  and  effectively 
giving  satisfaction  in  a  generous  spirit  to  the  em- 
ployees of  such  services.  A  conscientious  govern- 
ment cannot  allow  those  who  thus  work  for  the 
general  advantage  of  the  citizens  to  be  oppressed  or 
harshly  treated. 

Unions  are  Unionism  has  undoubtedly  improved 

unfortunately    the  condition,  not  merely  of  the  trades 

confined  almost  that  have  adopted  it,  but,  to  some  extent 

entirely  to       too,  the  general  condition  of  the  whole 

skilled  trades.    labouring  class.       It  is,  unfortunately, 

however,   the  classes  of  more    highly  skilled  labour — 

precisely  the  classes  which  least  urgently  stood  in  need 

of  protection — ^that  have  profited  most  largely  by  the 

advantages  of  combination. 

The  class  above  that  of  the  artisan,  the 
Unions  would    vast    middle-class    of   society,    with   its 
tto  much  to     various  grades  and  strata — farmers,  shop- 
improve  the     ,  °  1  i.       r         ■ 
classes  above    keepers,   commercial  agents  of  various 
the  tradesmen     kinds,  teachers,  civil  servants,  clerks — 
this  vast  class  has  not  yet  (with  the  ex- 
ception of  the  legal  and  medical  professions)  awakened 
to  the  opportunities  which  united  action  holds  out  to 
them. 

Yet  this  middle  class  suffers  very  keenly  under  our 
industrial  system.  It  is  crushed  from  above  by  the 
superior  power  of  the  very  rich,  and  from  below  by  the 
claims  of  the  poor.  It  is  often  dependent  on  those 
above  it  and  easily  hurt  by  those  below.  It  can  compete 
with  difficulty  against  Capital  above,  and  below  it  are 
the  banded  forces  of  skilled  Labour.  The  frenzied 
competition  of  modern  life  often  means  for  the  middle 
classes  a  desperate  struggle  to  maintain  their  social 
status,  the  conditions  of  life  that  are  indispensable 
to  their  content.  For  them  poverty  is  well-dressed 
poverty,  often  a  more  painful  poverty  than  poverty  in 


102  THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE    UNIONS. 

rags,  for  it  adds  the  mortification  of  wounded 
pride,  the  chafing  of  sensitive  culture,  the  anxious 
effort  to  keep  up  appearance,  to  the  physical  pinch  of 
want. 

Now    the    principle    of     Association 
and  nave  done    pj-QmJses  the  middle  classes  to  alleviate 
countries        their  stressful  state  while  sparing  their 
honour  and  self-respect.      To  give  one 
instance,  shopkeepers  of  moderate  means  on  the  Con- 
tinent have  made  many  and  highly  successful  attempts, 
by  means  of  various  mutual  agreements  and  co-operative 
schemes  to  make  headway  against  the  competition  of 
the   monster   shops,    bazaars,    arcades,    that   are   often 
huge    capitalistic    enterprises.    The    farmers    of    many 
continental  countries  have  anticipated  by  many  years 
the  farmers  of   Ireland  in  perceiving  the  advantages 
which  co-operation  has  in  store  for  them. 

It  is  merely  a  want  of  social  education  which  prevents 
the  middle  classes  in  Ireland  from  forming  the  many 
various  co-operative  schemes  which  would  enable  them, 
as  their  brethren  on  the  Continent,  to  resist  the  absorbing 
power  of  large  capital,  and  by  which  they  could  secure 
from  society  at  large  in  which  they  perform  such 
useful  functions,  a  more  adequate  return  of  peace 
and  comfort. 

Then,  again,  below  the  class  of  skilled 
Unskilled       artisans  there  are  the  teeming  masses 
workers         of  the  very  poor ;    day-labourers,    un- 
skilled workmen,  with  nothing  to  depend 
on  except  their  physical  strength.     Numerous  as  they 
are,  forming  the  majority — in  Ireland  the  vast  majority 
— of  the  labouring  class,  they  are  isolated  one  from  the 
other,  and  cannot  easily  unite,  or  at  least  cannot  easily 
form  Unions  such  as  the  carefully  planned  organisa- 
tions by  means  of  which  the  skilled  tradesmen  can  so 
efficiently  protect  their  interests. 

They  are  lacking  in  the  qualities  requisite  for  the 
formation  of  stong  associations.  They  have  not  the 
education  and  breadth  of  mental  outlook  which  the 
possession  of  a  skilled  trade  impUes ;  they  have  not  the 


THE   CHURCH   AND   TRADE    UNIONS.  I03 

sense  of  fraternity  which  the  possession  of  common  know- 
ledge and  a  common  skill  confers  ;  they  are  not  brought 
into  constant  touch  with  each  other  by  their  work,  and 
do  not  learn  to  know  each  other  and  to  form  bonds  of 
friendship  and  trust ;  they  do  not  look  forward  to 
acquiring  excellence  in  any  particular  work,  and  therefore 
cannot  hope  for  better  wages ;  they  have  no  ambition 
and  little  self-respect ;  their  wages  are  so  poor  and 
precarious  that  they  cannot  lay  by  part  of  them  for  the 
apparently  remote  advantage  to  be  got  in  a  Union  ; 
worst  of  all,  each  of  them  feels  that  the  thousands  of  those 
about  him  are  all  his  enemies,  envying  him  his  job  when 
he  has  got  one,  and  ready  to  supplant  him  at  any 
moment.  Their  character  deteriorates,  they  become 
apathetic,  improvident,  subservient,  slavish.  They  can 
be  treated  (as  the  heartless  and  significant  phrase  ot 
industrial  language  has  it)  as  "  cheap  and  docile 
labour." 

And   this   description    which    I    have 
aad  all  women  criyQ^  of  unskilled  labouring  men  is  true 
workers  are     ?•      c    i.  n      .       v     r     n 

hard  to  unite  ^^^  ^^^^'  "^°^^  universally  true)  of  all 
women  wage-earners  whether  skilled  or 
not.  In  their  minds  a  Union  is  the  institution  where 
their  husband  or  their  father  spends  an  immoderate 
amount  of  money  and  consumes  an  immoderate  amount 
of  time  in  talk,  with  no  other  result  than  the  bringing  on 
of  a  strike  which  reduces  them  and  him  to  misery. 
Women  generally  do  not  settle  down  to  the  study  and 
practice  of  a  skilled  trade  because  they  most  often  hope 
that  marriage  will  free  them  from  the  necessity  of  work. 
Besides,  whether  skilled  or  not,  they  are  very  much 
divided  by  class  distinctions,  distrustful  of  each  other 
and  easily  frightened  and  bullied.  I  doubt  if  out  of  the 
half-million  and  more  of  women  wage-earners  in  Ireland 
there  are  4,000  in  any  Union.  The  wealthy  women  who 
talk  much  of  Women's  rights  have  not  yet — 'in  Ireland 
at  least — begun  to  help,  as  Catholic  women  do  on  the 
Continent,  their  poorer  sisters  to  unite  and  win  for 
themselves  a  decent  livelihood,  one  of  their  proper 
and  essential  rights. 


104        THE  CHURCH  AND  TRADE  UNIONS. 

but   Catholic         Catholic  Social  writers  have  not  found 

social  activity    i^  so  difficult  to  induce  the  middle  classes 

can  do  much     to    adopt    the    methods     of     Christian 

to  uplift  and    fraternity     for    their    protection ;     the 

organise  them.  Church  has  not  found  it  so  difficult  to 

unite  the  more  skilled  kinds  of  labourers  in  strong  and 

effective  Unions  ;  nor  has  she  found  it  hard  to  create  in 

many  of  the  Parliaments  of  Europe  a  Catholic  Party 

to  be   the    foremost    champion    of    every  law  which 

aims  at  the  regeneration  of  the  poor. 

But  though  laws  can  do  much  there  is  much  more  they 
cannot  do  ;  there  is  much  which  has  to  be  done  before 
they  can  do  anything.    To  improve  the  most  defenceless 
classes    of     society,    unskilled    labourers    and    women 
workers,  this  vast  mass  of  pauperised  and  semi-pauperised 
men  and  women,  living  in  black  squalor  and  suffering, 
many  of  them  sunk  in  degrading  habits  of  drunkenness, 
absorbed  by  their  sense  of  oppression,  yet  unable  to  rise 
from  it,  sometimes  apathetic,  at  other  times  senselessly 
violent,  ignorant    of    the  true  remedies  for  their  evil 
phght  and  helpless  to  apply  them  even  if  they  knew 
them,  strangers  to  each  other,  distrusting  each  other, 
furiously  competing  with  each  other — to  uplift,  I  say, 
these  poor  creatures,  to  put  into  each  of  them  a  heart 
of  courage  and  hope,  to  enhghten  them  as  to  their  true 
nethods  of  redress,  to  train   them  in  the  social  virtues 
of  sobriety,  thrift,  self-respect  and  mutual  trust,  and  then 
to  form  of  them  strong  disciplined  battalions  of  good 
Catholic  labourers,  battalions  which  will,  in  fighting  for 
their  rights,  respect  the  rights  of  others,  and  will  resist 
not  merely  those  who  oppress  them  from  above,  but 
those  who  wish  to  destroy  all  society  from  below,  is  a 
gigantic  work  and  not  the  work  of  a  day  or  a  year. 

It  is  this  work  which  the  Church  with  her  inexhaustible 
resources  of  charitable  energy,  with  her  God-given  wisdom 
and  her  genius  for  organisation  is  at  present  engaged  on. 
It  is  this  work  which  is  the  object  of  those  thousands  of 
social  institutions  of  whose  marvellous  success  on  the 
Continent  we  in  Ireland,  alas!  know  so  httle. 


"  THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  WORK." 

LET  us  imagine  a  very  small  nation 
of  a  homogeneous  character,  and 
necessary  ^et    us    imagine    that,    by   some 

for  social  order,  extraordinary  chance,  the  most  suitable 
form  of  government,  the  most  suitable 
laws,  the  most  appropriate  economic  measures  were 
devised  for  it,  and  applied  by  men  of  the  greatest 
wisdom  and  ability.  There  would  still  be — who  can 
doubt  it  ? — in  that  small  nation  much  discontent, 
much  affliction,  much  injustice,  many  crimes.  Why  ? 
Simply  because  it  is  human  passions  that  cause  most 
of  the  misery  and  crime  in  society,  and  because  no 
laws  can  still  the  passions  in  the  hearts  of  men. 
Man's  passions  will  always  urge  him  to  commit 
crimes  and  take  the  risk  of  being  punished,  and  they 
will  urge  him  to  find  some  means  of  eluding  the  most 
cunningly  contrived  law. 

How  much  more  rife,  therefore,  will  misery  and 
crime  be  in  a  large  nation,  with  its  infinite  complexities, 
especially  if  (as  is  always  the  case)  the  past  has  planted 
widely  in  that  nation  evil  customs,  jealousies,  hatreds, 
and  especially  if  the  Ten  Commandments  of  God  are 
not  held  in  much  reverence  among  its  people  ? 

Remember,  I  do  not  say  that  laws  are  useless.  They 
are  absolutely  necessary.  The  better  and  more  suitable 
they  are,  and  the  more  justly  they  are  administered, 
the  less  scope  will  be  given  to  the  evil  passions  of  men 
the  less  suffering  there  will  be,  the  more  prosperity  and 
happiness  ;  and  therefore  it  is  our  duty  as  good  Catholics 
to  work  according  to  our  opportunities  for  the  enact- 
ment of  good  laws.  A  society,  however,  ruled  by  the 
wisest  of  human  laws,  but  neglectful  of  God's  law,  would 
6 


I06  THE  CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL  WORK. 

be  an  inferno,  a  pandemonium.  Laws  can  punish  the 
detected  outcome  of  some  passions  and  diminish  the 
opportunities  of  others,  but  they  cannot  penetrate  the 
soul  or  control  the  inmost  springs  of  human  action. 
Rehgion  alone  can  do  this. 

Hence  we  see  that  even  for  the  peace 

a    •  ,      .    .       and     welfare    of    human     society     the 
Social   mission   ru  ^^-i,   v.  ■  u^.         •     •        / 

of  the  Church.    Church  has  a   mighty  mission   to   per- 
form, and  that  it  is  futile  to  try  to  cure 
the  social  evils  of  the  day  if  liberty  is 
not  given  to  the  Church  to  fulfil  the  mission  that  God, 
the  Maker  of  society,  has  given  her. 

The  Church  not  merely  speaks  to  the  consciences  of 
individuals,  telhng  each  one  of  his  duties  in  all  the  cir- 
cumstances of  life,  but  she  speaks  to  men  grouped  in 
the  societies  that  men  form,  the  nation,  the  city, 
the  family,  the  association.  Each  of  these  societies 
has  liberty  to  work  out  its  own  welfare ;  but  that  hberty, 
hke  every  true  liberty,  must  be  exercised  within  the 
bounds  set  for  it  by  God's  Church,  the  exponent  of 
God's  Law. 

The  Church  is  not  merely  a  teacher  of 
Her  true  principle.    She  is  an  inspirer  of  good 

organisations-    action.      She    not    merely    sows    ideas. 

She   brings   them   to   fruitfulness.     She 

not  merely  instructs  ;   she  organises.     She  first  forms 

individuals  to  virtue,  and  she  then  associates,  directs, 

energises  them. 

From  her  earliest  days  she  has  shown  a  genius  for 
banding  men  together  in  associations  of  all  kinds,  con- 
fraternities, sodalities,  guilds,  communities  of  monks 
and  nuns,  brotherhoods  of  nobles,  associations  for 
teaching,  for  nursing,  for  working,  even  for  fighting. 
In  her  two  thousand  years  of  life  she  has  brought 
forth  innumerable  such  associations,  and  her  fertihty 
is  not  less  to-day  than  in  the  past.  What  an  ad- 
vantage this  genius  gives  her  in  our  age,  when  all 
hopes  of  peace  and  order  are  placed  in  sohdarity  and 
union  ! 


THE   CHORCH  and   SOCIAL  WORK.  ioj 

And  what  associations  can  be  compared  with  hers  ? 

She  not  merely  forms  them,  she  informs  them  with  her 

spirit,  enabUng  them  to  thrive  and  work 

Their  strength    with  energy  and  effect.     She  alone  can 

infuse  into  their   members   the    virtues 

which  make  associations  firm — self-sacrifice,   patience, 

hope,    true   charity.      She    alone    can    counteract   the 

disintegrating    forces    that    are    always    at     work    in 

societies — jealousy,  distrust,  and  fickleness. 

This    power    to    bind    together    and 

is  Christian      weld   and   harden    the   crumbling   clay 
charity.         of  society  is  above  all  the  sacred  fire 
of    charity    which    Christ    has    placed 
in  the  shrine  of  His  Church. 

Charity,  unseliish  love,  was  not  quite  unknown  in 
the  Pagan  world  of  old,  even  as  it  is  not  unknown  in  the 
Pagan  world  around  us  to-day ;  but  it  was  as  some 
rare  and  beautiful  flower  causing  men  to  stop  and 
wonder.  It  stirred  up  the  praises  of  the  rhetorician  and 
roused  poets   to  sing. 

This  flower  now  grows  in  profusion  in  the  garden 
of  the  Church,  so  that  we  of  the  household  almost 
cease  to  wonder  or  to  notice.  It  was  almost  a  new 
virtue  when  Christ  said :  "A  new  commandment  I 
give  you  that  you  love  one  another."  It  was  indeed 
quite  new,  inasmuch  as  Christ,  in  ordering  us  to  love 
our  neighbour  for  the  love  of  God,  has  made  of 
natural  charity  a  supernatural  virtue.  Human  pity  and 
sympathy  and  love  retain  all  their  old  beauty  and 
fragrance,  but  Christ  has  given  them  a  new  glory  and 
strength,  a  new  radiance  caught  from  the  brightness  of 
Heaven. 

What  makes  the  world  of  to-day  so  bright  compared 
to  the  Pagan  world  we  read  of  is  not  an  exacter  notion  of 
justice,  or  an  exacter  carrying  out  of  justice,  but  it  is  the 
charity  which  Christ  has  brought  into  the  world.  The 
world,  even  the  unchristian  world  of  to-day,  is  far 
more  Christian  than  it  admits.  Much  of  the  charity, 
which  it  has  inherited  from  the  Christianity  it  combats, 
hngers  in  the  recesses  of  its  heart. 
6* 


Io8  THE    CHURCH   AND    SOCIAL   WORK. 

Justice  is  necessary  that  peace  and 

order  may  reign  in  the  world,  but  justice 

Justice         must  be  completed  by  charit5^    A  world 

insufficient       ^^^j^^  ^     •  ^g^-^^  ^^^^^  ^^^j^  ^^  ^^  ^^_ 

for  social  peace.  .         ^  i  ^^      it     u     -4.  j   i, 

Dearable  world,     it  charity  ceased  her 

beneficent  work  for  a  single  day,  such 
a  fearful  explosion  of  suffering  would  result,  such  an 
agonising  cry  would  rise  up  from  earth  to  heaven  that 
those  who  now  cry  out  that  rights  alone  should  be  the 
basis  of  society,  and  that  the  gifts  of  charity  are  dis- 
honouring to  those  who  receive  them,  would  stand 
aghast  at  the  work  of  Wind  justice  and  would  call  out 
for  tender-eyed  charity  to  come  back  in  mercy  to  the 
world. 

Justice  can  lessen  poverty  in  the  world.  She  cannot 
quite  banish  it.  Foohsh  are  the  dreams  of  those  who 
doubt  Christ's  word  :  "  The  poor  ye  shall  always  have 
with  you."  Justice  can  lessen  the  suffering  of  the 
world,  but  she  can  never  change  the  world  from  being 
a  valley  of  tears.  When  the  relations  of  justice  have 
been  harmonised — if  ever  they  be — with  the  greatest 
nicety,  the  restless,  selfish  passions  of  men,  the  myriad 
sicknesses  that  prey  on  poor  humanity,  the  hand  of 
death  snatching  away  the  bread-winner  or  guardian, 
the  blind  violence  of  storm  and  flood  and  fire  and 
earthquake,  will  still  continue  to  strew  the  earth  with 
suffering. 

Charity    is    the    great    regenerating 

Charity  urges    force,  the  great  consohng  force  which 

the  Church      Qi^rist  has  placed  in  the  world.    Charity 

0  wor     0      consumed  the  Sacred  Heart  of  Christ. 

secure  social      -..  ^.-u     t       *.     t  xs-     n-u       i, 

peace.  ^^  consumes  the  heart  of  His  Church. 

The  object  of  the  Church's  existence  is 
to  save  man  from  the  evils  that  affhct  man's  soul,  and 
therefore,  indirectly  at  least,  from  his  bodily  evils  too, 
which  drag  down  and  destroy  his  soul. 

Therefore  the  Church  has  been  perpetually  called  on 
to  settle  the  social  question,  the  question  of  man's  neces- 
sary comfort  in  the  world.  In  the  past  it  was  the  slave 
question  or  the  serf  question  or  the  burgher  question. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  WORK.  lOQ 

To-day  it  is  the  Labour  question ;  and  she  will  settle  it, 
not  merely  by  the  authority  she  has  to  define  human 
rights,  but  by  the  marvellous  power  given  her  by  God 
of  devising  and  inspiring  works  of  charity. 

Charity  urges  the  Christian  to  work 
Distinction      ^^^  ^'^  neighbour,   but  this  work  may 
between        be  one  of  two  kinds.     It  may  be  what 
-  charitabla       is  usually  known   as   charitable  work, 
work  and       or  it  may  be  what  is  called  social  work. 
social  work.         By  charitable  work  I  mean,  for  in- 
stance,   providing    for    the    blind,    the 
maimed,  the  orphan,  the  sick,  the  giving  of  alms  to  the 
deserving  poor.    By  social  work  I  mean  work  which  aims 
at  preventing  poverty,  sickness,  suffering.      Charitable 
work  cures  the  wound  ;  social  work  prevents  the  blow 
from  falling.     Charitable  work  prevents  the  effects  of 
evil ;  social  work  cuts  at  the  root  of  the  evil. 

As  I  have  said,  we  shall  always  have 

The  latter       y^jth  us  the  impoverished,  the  orphaned, 

™°^®  the  sick,  the  disabled,  and  in  succouring 

tha^^thef       them    we   shall    be   continuing   Christ's 

former.         work ;    but   nowadays  the   world   is  so 

disorganised,  whole  classes  of  men  are 

so  afflicted  and  helpless,  there  is  so  much  destitution  and 

suffering,  untimely  death  and  avoidable  disease,  that 

charity — old  as  the  Church  yet  ever  new — has  undergone 

a  great  evolution.    It  urges  us  now  not  merely  to  staunch 

the  wounds  received  in  the  struggle  for  life,  but  to  calm 

that  struggle ;  it  urges  us  to  repair  and  reconstitute  the 

diseased  and  weakened  organisms  of  society,  the  family, 

the   city,     the  state ;  it  urges  us  to  uplift  and  weld 

together    whole   classes    of    individuals    now    helpless 

because  isolated,  so  that  they  may  be  able  to  serve  God 

in  comfort  and  peace,  and  save  their  souls. 

To  exemplify  what  I  mean.    To  give  a 
Examples.       sum  of  money  or  food  or  clothes  to  a 
poor  family,  is  a  good  work  and  will  be 
richly  rewarded,  but  to  give  the  head  of  that  family 
paid  work,  so  that  he  may  support  it  in  decent  inde- 
pendence is  better.      The  giving  of  work  is  better  than 


IIO  THE  CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL  WORK. 

the  giving  of  alms.  Alms  merely  carries  the  poor  man 
forward  on  the  road  of  hfe,  leaving  him  as  weak  as 
before.  But  wages  for  work  strengthens  his  steps  and 
enables  him  to  bear  life's  burden  with  patience  and 
cheerfulness. 

To  contribute  to  a  hospital  is  a  good  and  blessed 
work,  and  there  will  be  always  many  who  will  need 
the  hospital ;  but  to  use  one's  influence  and  efforts  to 
have  good  and  healthy  dwelhngs  built  for  the  poor,  so 
that  there  may  be  less  need  of  hospitals,  is  a  better 
work. 

To  provide  proper  care  for  a  young  girl,  a  victim  of 
tuberculosis  contracted  in  some  sweating  workshop, 
is  a  noble  work,  but  to  organise  the  hundreds  of  her 
sisters  so  that  they  be  not  doomed  to  the  same  fate, 
is  yet  a  nobler  one. 

To  put  an  orphaned  boy  into  an  orphanage  may  be 
a  great  work  of  charity,  but  it  might  be  a  more  blessed 
charity  to  provide  otherwise  for  him,  putting  him  in 
the  house  of  his  kinsfolk  and  giving  him  a  useful  trade. 

After  all,  hospitals,  orphanages,  old  people's  homes, 
and  the  like,  necessary  works  as  they  are  to-day,  and 
beautiful  works  of  charity,  are  rather  a  sign  of  social 
decay  and  disruption  than  marks  of  social  progress. 
Normally  the  family  should  keep  its  aged  and  infirm 
beneath  its  own  roof-tree.  In  the  good  old  CathoUc 
days  orphanages  were  for  foundhngs  only.  The  hospital 
was  the  refuge  only  of  the  passing  stranger,  or  else  of 
those  whose  diseases  were  contagious  or  could  not 
well  be  treated  in  the  home. 

Society,  if  properly  constituted,  ought  to  support 
and  widen  and  render  more  fruitful  the  activities  of 
its  natural  organisms  the  family,  the  city,  the  associa- 
tion, and  thus  render  superfluous  a  great  part  of  our 
charitable  institutions. 

For  want  of  charitable  thought  and  care  the  hand  of 
almsgiving  is  often  misdirected.  To  give  alms  on  the 
street  to  the  beggar  may  be  a  blessed  deed,  but  to  give 
it,  as  one  easily  may,  to  the  drunkard  who  will  hasten 
his  steps  to  spend  it  in  drink,  or  to  the  idle  impostor. 


THE  CHURCH   AND    SOCIAL   WORK.  Ill 

may  bring  a  blessing  on  the  giver  for  his  good  will,  but 
may  bring  a  curse  on  him  who  receives  it. 

After  all,  everything  worth  doing  at  all  ought  to  be 
well  done.  Therefore,  above  all,  our  charity  should  be 
done  well,  not  merely  with  a  good  intention,  but  so  as 
to  procure  its  fullest  measure  of  good.  Charity  imphes 
very  sacred  interests,  interests  of  God,  of  our  neigh- 
bour, of  ourselves  ;  it  is  infinitely  rich  in  spiritual  and 
material  blessings,  and  should  therefore,  in  proportion, 
be  done  with  all  the  care  and  perfection  possible. 

Nay,  if  God  blesses  the  man  of  charitable  heart  who 
makes  a  sacrifice  of  money,  He  will  bless  that  man 
doubly  and  trebly  if  he  has  previously  made  the  still 
greater  sacrifice  of  time  and  care  in  finding  out  how 
the  money  may  be  best  apphed. 

The   charity   of   CathoHc    Ireland    is 

Charity  in       magnificent.     Our  orphanages,  asylums, 

Ireland  is       retreats,    refuges,    hospitals    and    other 

very  abundant,    such  institutions  are  nobly  supported. 

No  country  in  the  world,  according  to 

a  modern  English  writer,  a  Protestant,  gives  as  much  in 

proportion   to  its  wealth  as   Ireland.     This  is  all  the 

greater  glory  to  our  people,  as  the  budget  of  Irish  charity 

is  not  swollen  by  large  donations  of  the  very  wealthy — 

for  we  have  few  such — but  by  the  generous  sacrifices  of 

our  middle  classes,  whose  struggle  in  hfe  is  generally 

very  hard,  and  by  the  mites  of  the  poor. 

But  while  this  is  very  true  and  very 
Lack  of  social    consoling,     and    is    the    pledge    of    a 
work  in         glorious  reward   for  our  nation   in   the 
Ireland.         world    to    come,    there   is   another   fact 
not  less  true,  namely,  that  nowhere  in 
Europe,  I  make  bold  to  say,  is  social  charity,  as  distin- 
guished from  alms-giving  charity,  less  known  or  practised. 
In  every  parish  in  the  land,  in  town  and  country, 
there  are  many  pious,  earnest  CathoHcs  who  perform 
their  religious  duties  with  regularity,  whose  hves  are 
models  of  all  the  domestic  and  religious  virtues,  who 
give  open-handedly  of  their  hard-earned,  and  not  too- 
abundant  means  to  the  charitable  institutions  of  their 


112  THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  WORK. 

neighbourhood,  and  who  give  generously  alms  to  the 
poor  whom  they  meet  in  the  street  or  on  the  roadway. 

Having  done  this  they  rest  content.  It  never  occurs 
to  them  that  their  charity  should  mean  anything  else 
than  alms-giving  or  their  annual  subscription  to  a 
hospital  or  an  orphanage. 

Yet  the  enlightened  Christian  charity  recommended 
by  the  Pope,  and  which  we  must  practise  if  we  are,  as 
St.  Paul  says,  "  to  re-establish  all  things  in  Christ  " 
(Eph.  i.),  means  much  more.  It  means  that  we  should 
interest  ourselves  in  the  conditions  of  hfe,  in  the  pro- 
spects and  difficulties  of  our  poor  brethren  ;  that  we 
should  examine  into  the  causes  of  their  suffering  ;  it 
means  that  it  is  more  blessed  to  prevent  disease  than  to 
cure  it ;  more  blessed  to  give  good  dweUings  to  the 
poor  than  to  give  them  hospitals  for  diseases  con- 
tracted in  bad  ones ;  more  blessed  to  enable  the 
widow  to  rear  her  children  than  to  place  them  in  indus- 
trial schools  ;  more  blessed  to  give  work  than  a  dinner 
or  two  to  the  starving  man  ;  more  blessed  to  have  the 
young  taught  a  useful  trade  than  to  secure  them 
a  job  that  will  teach  them  nothing ;  more  blessed  to 
educate  in  Christian  principles  and  unite  in  Christian 
associations  the  helpless  day-labourers  and  the  work- 
women than  to  give  them  odd  doles  or  odd  jobs. 
In  short,  God  asks  of  each  of  us  to  give  to  His  suffering 
brethren  the  charity  of  our  personal  effort  as  well  as 
that  of  money,  the  gift  of  self — a  greater  and  more 
costly  gift  than  that  of  alms. 

The  great  lack  of  social  sense   among 

Causes  of  this.  Irish  Catholics  is  due  in  some  measure 
to  our  strange  system  of  higher  educa- 
tion which  cramps  or  misdirects  the  energies  of  the 
unrivalled  teaching  agencies  which  we  possess.  It  is 
in  part  due  also  to  the  absence  of  those  open,  savage 
attacks  on  morality,  family  life,  religious  hberty,  and 
religious  education  which  have  roused  Catholics  in  other 
countries  from  the  torpor  in  which  they  too,  fifty  years 
ago,  were  sunk.  Our  Cathohc  social  activity  would 
not  be  so  lamentably  deficient  were  it  not  for  the  fact 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL   WORPC.  113 

that  a  very  powerful,  wealthy,  and  splendid  Protestant 
nation  has  forced  its  literature  and  much  of  its  mentality 
and  its  moral  habits  upon  us,  and  now,  in  spite  of  tele- 
graph and  newspaper,  curtains  us  off,  more  effectually 
than  perhaps  ever  before  in  our  history,  from  the  rest 
of  the  CathoHc  world. 

To  describe  at  any  length  the  profuse 
Social  activities  flowering    of    social     charity    in    that 
in  other        Cathohc  world  is,  of  course,  impossible 
coontries.       on  this  occasion.     All  we  can  do  is  to 
take  up  a  flower  here  and  there,  cast  a 
hasty  glance  on  it  and  pass  on.    There  are  books,  de- 
scriptive of  these  social  works  to  be  had,  books  which, 
though  they  are    humiHating    reading    for    the    Irish 
Cathohc,  will  certainly  make  him  admire,  and  let  us  hope 
rouse  him  to  imitate. 

It  was  in  Germany,  and  chiefly  owing 
In  Oermany      to  the  inspiration  of  a  great  Archbishop, 
that  the  Church  first  set  herself  to  the 
task  of  rebuilding  society  on  Cathohc  principles.     Her 
success   has   been   amazing.     Gathohcs   are  increasing 
rapidly — far  more  rapidly — than  the  rest  of  the  German 
people  in  numbers  and  wealth  and  influence.    Socialism, 
the   offspring    of    irrehgion    and    discontent,    though 
stronger  in  Germany  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world, 
has  not  been  able  to  get  any  hold  on  German  Cathohcs. 
In  every  little  village  in  the  Catholic  parts  of  this 
Empire,  there  is  a  Cathohc  Agricultural  Society  with 
its  savings  bank,  its  loan  fund,  its  study  club,  its  con- 
ferences.     In    such   societies    there   are   some    400,000 
Cathohcs.    In  every  town  where  Cathohcs  are  numerous 
there  are  Catholic  Workmen's  Clubs,  800  in  all,  con- 
taining altogether  between  200,000  and  300,000  members. 
These  clubs    are — as  often    as  not — presided    over    by 
priests,  and   have  attached  to   them  many  subsidiary 
institutions,   various    kinds   of    mutual  help  societies, 
building  societies,  co-operative  stores,  libraries,  evening 
classes,  and  the  rest. 

Then  there  is  the  gigantic  network  of  Christian  Trade 
unions,  boldly  professing  Christian  principles,  formidable 


tt^  THE   CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL   WORK. 

armies  of  Catholic  labourers,  but  with  peace  and  not 
plunder  inscribed  on  their  banners,  and  causing  no 
stir  of  anxiety  or  suspicion  in  those  who  use  and 
enjoy  their  wealth  as  Christians  should.  Founded  in 
1894,  they  soon  formed  a  Federation  (of  which  the  first 
president  was  a  priest),  and  now  they  count  almost 
500,000  members.  Then  there  is  the  more  compre- 
hensive People's  Union  in  which  CathoHcs  of  all  classes, 
rich  and  poor,  learned  and  unlearned,  nobles  and  humble 
folk,  labourers  and  employers,  men  of  the  city  and  the 
country,  some  800,000  in  all,  are  banded  together  in  an 
organisation  almost  as  miniitely  elaborated  as  an  army. 
To  serve  as  the  directing  staff  of  this  organisation  there 
is  a  huge  array  of  writers,  lecturers,  organisers,  agents, 
professional  experts,  and  a  connected  system  of  inquiry 
and  advice  offices.  It  supports  a  press  which  sends  forth 
many  daily  papers  in  different  towns,  and  a  review 
with  a  circulation  of  650,000,  and  scatters  broadcast 
over  the  country  annually  many  hundreds  of  pamphlets 
and  flying  sheets.  To  give  pohtical  expression  to  the 
Cathohc  population  of  the  Empire,  there  is  the  Cathohc 
Centre  Party,  the  strongest,  the  most  united,  the  most 
highly  equipped  party  in  the  German  Parhament, 
always  standing  for  Cathohc  principles,  always  defend- 
ing all  true  Cathohc  liberties,  hberty  of  reUgion,  of 
education,  of  work,  of  association,  always  championing 
the  rights  of  the  poor  and  the  oppressed. 

In  France,  Belgium,  Holland,  Austria, 
ftad  elsewhere.   Spain,    Switzerland,    the   Catholics   are 
similarly  organised,   though,   except   in 
Belgium,  not  yet  so  thoroughly  nor  with  such  centralisa- 
tion and  effectiveness  as  in  the  German  Empire. 

I  shall  not,  however,  dwell  further  on 
somT  social      ^^^  ^^^^  pohtical  organisations  of  Con- 
works  tinental    Catholics — though    these    too 
commonly       have  their  fruitful  lessons  for  us  also — 
foimd.         ^or  yet  shall  I  describe  the  Catholic  Trade 
unions.     It  will  be  more  to  my  purpose 
at  present,  and  more  instructive,  to  mention  at  random 
a  few  of  the  social  works  of  more  restricted  aim  which 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL   WORK.  I15 

are  the  fruits  of  this  modern  renaissance  of  Cathohc 
charity. 

For  instance,  in  towns,  especially  the 

Social  study •    manufacturing  centres  and  the  Univer- 

clubs  of  men     sity  towns,   scores  of  Catholic  men   of 
all   ranks  and  occupations — University 
professors,   doctors,   lawyers,  officers,  merchants,   civil 
officials,   students,  clerks,   artisans— come   together  in 
small  groups  on  certain  evenings  in  the  week  to  devote 
themselves  seriously  to  the  study  of  social  questions. 
The  woi-k  entails  a  different  sacrifice  for  each,  some 
social  amusement,  a  few  hours  taken  from  the  study 
for  a  profession,  a  restful  evening  after  a  day's  work 
in   office   or   factory  or  schoolroom.      They  get  some 
competent  person,   one  of  themselves  or  another,   to 
give  them  lectures  on  some  question  of  social  economy, 
or  on  the  Cathohc  view  of  some  social  problem.    They 
get  up    discussions  to  make  sure  of  their  ideas.    They 
ask    questions,    propose    difficulties.       Each    of    them 
gets  a  particular  subject  to  make  up,  say,  the  prices 
of  labourers'  dwelhngs  in  the  locality,  the  real  owners 
of  some  slum  district,  the  movements  of  the  population 
of  some  poor  quarter  of  the  town,  the  conditions  of 
work  and  the  rate  of  wages  obtaining  in  some  specified 
industry.    The  results  of  these  enquiries  are  then  read, 
discussed,  and  tested.     These  men  thus  come  to  have 
an   accurate  and   living  knowledge  of  the  conditions 
of  the  hfe  of  the  poor,  can  penetrate  more  surely  into 
the  causes  of  their  misery,  and  are  in  a 
and  of  women,    position  to  consider  what  remedies  can 

be  applied  to  relieve  it. 
Women  too  form  similar  clubs.  Young  and  old, 
married  or  unmarried,  high-born  ladies  whose  ancestors 
fought  in  the  Crusades,  wealthy  ladies  of  the  bourgeoisie, 
their  poorer  sisters  too,  shop  assistants,  work  girls,  women 
in  fact  of  all  classes  and  ranks,  unequal  in  wealth  of 
gold,  but  equal  in  the  more  precious  wealth  of  charity, 
meet  together  on  a  level  of  perfect  equahty,  just  as  they 
meet  every  Sunday  before  the  altar  at  Mass,  to  study 
how  best  they  may  serve  Christ's  poor.    They  seek   dis- 


116  THE  CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL  WORK. 

tinction  and  consolation  in  something  besides  dress  and 
frivolous  amusement.  They  have  not  recourse  to  the 
excuse  that  their  family  duties  leave  them  no  time. 
They  do  not  think  it  inconsistent  with  their  family 
duties  to  sacrifice  occasionally  an  hour  or  two  of  their 
novel-reading.  They  .thus  gather  together  at  regular 
intervals  and  get  themselves  instructed  in  Catholic 
social  principles  and  ideals.  They  institute  personal 
inquiries  into  the  hves  of  the  poor  in  their  neighbour- 
hood. Sometimes,  for  instance,  they  map  out  a  quarter 
of  the  town,  each  taking  a  certain  street  or  a  portion  of 
it,  the  people  of  which  she  visits  personally. 

Such  work  is  delicate.      If  those  who 
Difficulty  and    undertake  it,  especially  those  of  higher 
importance  of    rank,    betray    any    vulgar    inquisitive- 
such  societies,    ness,    if   they   let   it   be   thought   that 
they  are  attracted  by  the  novel  sensa- 
tion of  a  descent  into  the  underground  of  society,  if 
they  show  the  least  air  of  priggish  condescension,  the 
sensitive  pride  of  the  poor  instantly  takes  alarm.    Those, 
however,  who  are  inspired  by  Christian  charity  and  act 
with  tact  and  sympathy,  will  easily  have  revealed  to 
them  the  secrets  of  slumland,  an  unknown  land  to  those 
outside  it ;  they  will  discover  the  feelings  and  the  views 
of  the  poor,  their  difficulties,  their  times  of  stress,  their 
expedients  and  resources.     Such  workers  have  already 
procured  us  more  useful  information  and  more  fi-uitful 
suggestions  than  could  be  got  from  the  books  of  learned 
professors,  or  the  dry  impersonal  statistics  of  officials. 

Again,  there  are  in  most   towns  information  offices, 
(or"  Secretariates")  where  the  poor  and  ignorant  may 
get  advice  free  of  charge  in  any  difficulty 
Information      that  may  befall  them.    Here  there  attend 
offices.  at  regular  intervals  those  whose  advice 

may  be  of  most  use,  doctors,  lawyers, 
magistrates, civil  oflicials,  experienced  business  men,  men 
and  women  of  special  knowledge  or  of  special  influence.     , 
These  give  to  the  poor,  not  money,  but  time,  trouble,  know-     '■ 
ledge,  thought.   They  tell  the  widow  where  best  her  son,     , 
given  his  particular  aptitudes,  can  be  put  to  ieam  a  trade ; 


THE  CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL  WORK.  117 

they  instruct  the  poor  man  who  has  been  defrauded  how 
he  can  most  easily  'get  justice  ;  they  show  the  man  who 
has  got  into  the  usurer's  hands  how  he  can  free  himself ; 
they  advise  the  ailing,  or  get  them  into  the  hospital 
where  they  will  be  best  attended ;  they  put  the 
needy  in  touch  with  the  various  agencies  (State  agencies 
or  private  institutions)  that  best  suit  them.  There  are 
hundreds  of  such  offices  in  working,  and  they  save 
annually  immense  sums  of  money  to  the  poor.  Some  of 
them  are  the  creations  of  Trade  Unions,  others  are  the 
fruit  of  the  charitable  initiative  of  pious  rich  people. 

Then,  again,  there  are  countless  social 

Organisations    works    aiming    at    the    preservation    of 

for  saving  of     family  life  among  the  poor. 
children.  Naturally  these  works    are  interested 

first  in  the  mother.  Whole  holocausts 
of  children  die  because  their  mothers  have  to  work  too 
hard  or  too  long,  or  cannot  give  them  proper  care.  In 
some  places  the  significant  fact  has  been  noted  that 
when  strikes  occur  among  women  workers,  infant 
mortaUty  decreases.  Thousands  of  children,  too,  are 
killed  by  their  mothers'  ignorance.  To  cure  this  awful 
evil.  Catholic  ladies  form  leagues.  They  get  them- 
selves informed  of  every  birth  occurring  in  a  district. 
They  place  their  own  superior  instruction  at  the  disposal 
of  these  poor  mothers.  They  organise  funds  to  provide 
all  the  attention  and  attendance  proper  for  the 
mothers  and  for  the  children  for  as  long  as  may 
be  necessary.  Better  still,  and  as  is  oftener  the  case, 
they  get  the  married  women  of  the  poor  to  form  mutual 
help  societies  for  these  purposes.  There  are  thousands  of 
little  infants  saved  every  year  to  their  mothers  and  their 
country  by  the  charitable  devotion  of  CathoHc  women. 

There    are    many    other    societies    of 

Many  similar     similar     kinds,     schools    for     mothers, 

works.         creches,     where     working- women     may 

leave    their    children    while    at    work ; 

societies  for  supplying  at  nominal  charges  to  mothers 

of  infants  children's  clothes,  new  milk,   and  things  of 

the  kind  ;  societies  for  bringing  the  anaemic   pale-faced 


Il8  THE  CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL  WORK. 

children  of  the  slums  to  live  for  a  fortnight  or  a  month 
in  the  fresh  mountain  air  or  by  the  seaside.  In  France 
rich  ladies  who  can  find  the  leisure,  do  not  rest  content 
with  supplying  the  money  for  such  vacation  colonies, 
but  go  themselves  with  the  children,  live  with  them,  teach 
them,  care  them,  and  organise  amusements  for  them. 

Another   work   of  incalculable   social 
Housekeeping    benefit  is  that  of  housekeeping  schools 
schools.         for    girls.       The     proper    spending    of 
money  is   as   important   for  prosperity 
as  the  earning  of  it.    Man's  sphere  is  to  provide,  woman's 
rather  to  spend.     The  housekeeper's  business  is  to  make 
the  best  possible  use  of  her  resources,  to  preserve  the 
health  of  the  home,  to  brighten  and  adorn  it,  and  make 
it  a  charm  against  the  wasteful  pubhc-house  and  the 
demoralising  street  corner.     But,  alas  !   too  often   the 
home  of   the   poor  man   is  given    over  to   the  bizarre 
instincts  of  a  young  wife,  ignorant,  slatternly  and  im- 
provident. 

These  housekeeping  schools  receive  girls  after  the 
ordinary  school  period.  They  are  not  technical  schools  ; 
for,  after  all,  housekeeping  is  not  a  trade,  but  the  duty  of 
all  women.  Belgium  alone,  a  country  little  bigger  than 
Munster,  has  nearly  two  hundred  such  schools,  some  of 
them  with  fom"  hundred  girls.  They  are  often  founded 
by  the  State,  but  often,  too — and  outside  Belgium  in 
every  instance — they  are  due  to  the  private  initiative 
of  Catholics.  These  schools  are  said  to  have  done  more 
for  the  material  prosperity  of  Belgium  than  the  rise 
which  has  taken  place  of  late  years  in  labourers'  wages. 

In  these  schools  the  young  girl  is  taught  the  necessity 
of  order,  foresight,  thrift,  and  cleanliness  ;  the  proper 
care  of  furniture  and  clothes ;  sewing,  knitting,  the 
making  and  mending  of  clothes;  washing,  cooking,  the 
preservation  of  food  from  spoiling;  the  keeping  of 
household  accounts ;  the  proper  things  to  buy,  and 
how  to  procure  them  ;  the  principles  of  hygiene,  house- 
hold remedies,  the  care  of  infants,  and  the  mental,  moral 
and  rehgious  training  of  children.  Of  course,  the  pro- 
grammes  in   such  schools   vary  according  as  they  are 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL   WORK.  IIQ 

in  the  city  or  country,  and  according  to  the  industries 
and  conditions  of  the  locaUty. 

Then  there    are  vast  numbers,  especi- 

"  Patronages  "  ally  in  France,  of  boys'  clubs  and  girls' 

for  boys        clubs,      "  patronages,"     as     they     are 

called,  from  being  placed  under  the  care 
of  some  patron  saint.  In  the  boys'  clubs  young  men, 
and  older  men,  too,  devote  some  of  their  time  one  or 
two  evenings  in  the  week  to  the  task  of  preserving  the 
young  from  idle  vagabondage  and  of  instructing  them 
in  useful  knowledge.  They  attract  the  boys  to  them  by 
organising  all  kinds  of  games  and  amusements.  They 
get  them  taught  singing,  music,  fencing,  gymnastics  ; 
they  read  to  them,  they  supply  them  with  good  books  ; 
they  teach  them  the  Catechism  and  their  religious  duties, 
and  thus  arm  them  against  the  false  principles  and  the  evil 
influences  to  which  the  poor  in  Continental  countries 
are  so  much  exposed.  They  teach  them  whatever  sub- 
jects these  boys  have  not  learned  at  school,  and  espe- 
cially they  get  them  thoroughly  instructed  in  some 
skilled  trade. 

Catholic  women   do   the  same  work 
and  girls.        for  girls.    In  the  great  industrial  centres 

these  "  patronages "  have  done  a 
gigantic  work  for  the  uphfting  of  factory  girls,  seam- 
stresses, and  the  other  victims  of  sweated  labour.  In 
these  clubs  Cathohc  ladies  provide  these  poor  girls 
with  places  where  they  will  get  a  taste  for  amusement 
without  grossness,  and  where  they  can  be  instructed 
without  the  stiff  disciphne  and  formahties  of  a  State 
schoolroom.  The  girls  are  taught  the  ordinary  school 
subjects ;  they  are,  above  all,  taught  housekeeping, 
and  encouraged  to  rival  each  other  in  putting  their 
lessons  to  good  use  in  their  own  homes.  They  are 
taught  how  to  form  various  kinds  of  mutual  societies, 
and,  in  spite  of  enormous  difficulties,  have  been  enabled 
to  form  very  efficient  Trade  Unions  for  their  pro- 
tection. 

In  Paris  alone  there  are  356  such  Patronages,  and 
in  all  France  (now  as  ever  the  motherland  of  heroic 


120  THE   CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL  WORK. 

devotion  to  noble  causes)  there  are  4,000,  some  founded 
by  priests,  others,  perhaps  most,  by  Catholic  ladies 
or  gentlemen. 

If  these  social  works  be  undertaken 

All  these  works  ^^om  unworthy  motives,  from  a  desire 
primarily        of  novel  sensations,  or  from  a  morbid 
religious.        curiosity,  or  from  a  love  of  ruling  and 
ordering    others,    or    from    a    snobbish 
desire  of  associating  with  the  people  of  high  rank  who 
may  engage  in  such  work,  they  are  doomed  to  barren- 
ness.      Neither  can  they  last  if  they  are  inspired  by 
merely  natural  motives,   by  the  generous  enthusiasm 
of  youth,  or  by  natural  kindness  of  heart.     Nay,  even 
when    they  are  done    in  the  spirit    of    true   charity, 
there  is  the  danger  that  the  immensity  and  urgency  of 
the  work    may   result   in    a   merely   external   energy, 
which  may  be  misdirected  and  cannot  be  counted  on  to 
endure. 

Consequently,  it  is  the  first  characteristic  of  such 
CathoHc  works,  the  secret  of  their  success,  that  they 
are  above  all  religious  works,  done  for  supernatural 
motives.  To  ensure  this,  those  who  organise  them 
insist  that  an  eminent  spirit  of  piety  and  a  regular  prac- 
tice of  Catholic  duty  should  characterise  their  members. 
Their  meetings  begin  and  end  with  prayer ;  Benedic- 
tion, Rosary,  and  other  devotions  are  an  essential  part 
of  their  working. 

For  instance,  there  is  a  large  sodaUty 
Example.  at  Barcelona.  It  consists  chiefly  of 
University  students,  not  generally  the 
most  pious  class  of  the  community,  in  Spain  or  anywhere 
else.  This  sodahty  is  the  centre,  the  mainspring  of  a 
large  number  of  other  social  works  which  it  keeps  going  ; 
Catechism  classes  for  poor  children,  night  classes  for 
working  boys,  the  visiting  of  hospitals  and  prisons,  a 
workman's  sodaUty,  a  choral  society,  a  boy's  technical 
school,  a  gratuitous  medical  service,  a  gratuitous  legal 
service,  a  savings  bank,  a  large  co-operative  society, 
and  many  mutual  societies  of  various  kinds. 

The  working  of  all  these  institutions  evidently  calls 


THE   CHURCH   AND   SOCIAL   WORK.  121 

for  an  enormous  output  of  energy  on  the  part  of  the 
sodahsts,  yet  the  directors  of  the  sodahty  consider 
that  the  only  means  of  keeping  its  members  braced  up 
to  their  work  is  to  insist  on  their  leading  a  very  intense 
religious  life.  Hence  the  sodahsts  have  weekly  meetings 
for  rehgious  exercises,  they  have  to  attend  weekly 
lectures  of  an  advanced  kind  on  CathoUc  doctrines, 
they  have  to  go  to  Holy  Communion  once  a  month. 
So  strict  are  the  regulations  that  if  any  member  is  negli- 
gent in  performing  the  charitable  work  assigned  him, 
or  if  he  misses  monthly  Communions  four  times  running, 
or  if  he  misses  six  successive  weekly  meetings,  he  is 
expelled  from  the  sodality.  However  excellent  a  young 
man  he  may  be,  if  he  does  not  live  up  to  this  high 
standard  of  Cathohc  apostolic  spirit  he  has  to  go. 
Yet,  though  there  are  many  expulsions  every  year, 
this  great  sodality  is  ever  growing,  and  now  counts 
nine  hundred  members. 

What  have  we  in  Ireland  comparable 

Lack  of  such    to  these  works  ?     It  has  been  said  that 
works  in       Protestants  in    Ireland  do  more  social 
Ireland.         work   than   Catholics.     They   certainly 
do  more  in  England.    We  have  recourse 
to  the  poor  excuse  that  those  who  do  such  work  among 
us  become  priests  or  nuns.     Certainly   Irish  Cathohc 
layfolk  leave  charitable  work  for  the  most  part  to  reli- 
gious, and  think  that  they  have  done  enough  when  they 
have  supplied  the  necessary  funds. 

We  have  the  Vincent  de  Paul  Society,  though  even 
it  is  not  as  flourishing  in  Ireland  as  on  the  Continent. 
We  have  some  ladies  who  visit  the  sick.  All  honour  be 
to  them — the  greater  honour  as  they  have  not  the  en- 
couragement of  finding  themselves  imitated.  We  have 
raffles  or  bazaars  in  which  charity  is  copiously  watered 
with  frivohty  and  amusement.  We  have,  I  say,  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  charitable  personal  work  done  by  lay- 
folk  (though  even  it  is  not  comparable  to  what  layfolk 
do  on  the  Continent),  but  of  the  more  constructive 
forms  of  charitable  endeavour,  of  Catholic  social  work 
properly  so  called,  there  is  little,  very  httle  indeed,  in 


122  THE   CHURCH   AND    SOCIAL   WORK. 

Catholic  Ireland.    In  this  respect  as  in  so  many  others, 
we  are  thirty  or  forty  years  behind  the  times. 

This  is  a  sad  pity.  Our  lack  of  care 
Pity  of  this,  for  our  neighbours'  welfare  is  all  the 
sadder  as  it  is  quite  strange  to  our 
national  tradition.  It  is  quite  un-Irish.  Those  of  you 
who  know  the  history  of  our  land  know  that  the  clans, 
into  which  Ireland  was  divided  were  organised  as  large 
families  knit  together  by  the  spirit  that  binds  a  family, 
the  spirit  of  mutual  sympathy,  of  mutual  help  and  re- 
sponsibihty.  Differences  in  wealth  did  not  dig  chasms 
between  classes.  The  poor  were  not  strangers  to  the 
rich,  or  enemies,  or  beings  of  a  different  clay,  but  were 
brothers.  Work  was  not  thought  a  disgrace  to  the 
trader,  nor  was  trade  a  derogation  in  the  eyes  of  the 
noble  and  the  rich  and  the  learned.  Society  was  not 
organised  on  business  lines — as  the  detestable  phrase 
has  it — but  on  a  principle  of  brotherhood,  a  principle 
racy  of  the  soil,  ancient  as  the  race  and  afterwards 
affirmed  and  consecrated  by  Christianity. 

The  problems  of  Irish  poverty  have 

Ireland  a       ^^^   ^^^  magnitude  which   tempts   the 

soil  for  such     ^°^^^^   worker  to   despair  in   the  huge 

works.         industrial  towns  of  other  countries.     Is 

not  our  neghgence  all  the  less  excusable  ? 

Much   of  our   people's   poverty  is  the  result  of    their 

chnging  to  Christ  in  the  past.      Would  not  this  have 

won  a  special  blessing  from  Christ  on  our  work  ?     But, 

above  all,  our  apathy  is  the  sadder,  as  nowhere  else 

in  the  world  has  a  richer  harvest  been  lost,  nowhere 

else  has  as  fruitful  a  soil  been  lying  fallow  waiting  for 

workers. 

Our  nation  is  poor.  All  its  classes  have  a  hard  struggle 
in  life.  Most  of  our  people  are  well  acquainted  with 
suffering,  and  therefore  each  one  is  the  fitter  to  sympa- 
thise with  those  harder  stricken  than  himself.  Irish 
hearts  are  kindly  hearts.  They  have  not  been  hardened 
by  generations  of  infidel  and  immoral  propaganda. 
The  breath  of  God's  grace  has  kept  them  fresh  and 
warm.     The  social  worker  in  Ireland  would  not  have 


THE  CHURCH  AND   SOCIAL  WORK.  I23 

had  to  contend  with  the  darkness  of  religious  ignorance, 
nor  would  he  have  had  to  remove  the  dead  weight  of 
anti-Christian  prejudice,  or  to  face  the  taunts  and  the 
blows  of  infidel  fanaticism. 

Nowhere  in  truth  would  and  ought  Catholic  social 
action  have  flourished  more  than  in  Ireland.  Yet  the 
very  reasons  which  make  this  reflection  on  the  past  so  sad, 
suggest  a  consoling  hope  for  the  future. 

Trusting  in  God's  continued  goodness,  we  may, 
I  think,  look  forward  to  a  day  when  our  people,  estab- 
lished in  peace,  and  guided  as  in  the  past  by  the  spirit  of 
Christ's  Church  and  by  the  words  of  Christ's  Vicar  on 
earth,  may  restore  order  and  comfort  and  prosperity  to 
this  land,  and  may  adorn  it  with  a  profuse,  a  beautiful 
and  a  varied  flowering  of  Catholic  social  works,  making 
it  again,  as  ten  centuries  ago,  the  fairest  spot  in  all  the 
Christian  world. 

The  love  of  God,  the  service  of  God,  is 

Our  religion     the  meaning   of  our  lives.     We  are  on 
should    be  \    earth  for  nothing  else.     All  else,  in  so 

more  fruitful ;   fg^j.  g^g  j^  jg  j^q^  God's  service,  is    mere 

m  practical  vanity  and  wasted  energy.  God's  service 
is  to  absorb  all  our  energy  ;  it  will  be 
our  only  happiness  on  earth,  our  eternal,  all-satisfying 
reward.  But  God's  service  is  the  doing  of  God's  will. 
One  cannot  love  God  or  serve  Him  and  not  do  what  He 
wishes.  Now,  God  has  not  shut  each  of  us  up,  as  it  were, 
in  a  little  cell,  and  ordered  us  to  serve  Him  thus.  He 
has  placed  us  all  together.  He  calls  on  us  for  certain 
acts  directed  to  Himself,  acts  of  faith,  of  hope,  of  charity, 
acts  of  worship  and  prayer  and  thanksgiving;  but  He 
calls  on  us  for  many  more  acts  besides,  acts  directed 
also  to  Himself  but  affecting  our  neighbours  too.  Most 
of  the  virtues  that  bind  us  to  God,  that  make  us  holy 
— truthfulness,  fidelity,  charity,  patience,  meekness, 
justice — have  reference  to  our  neighbour.  Our  indivi- 
dual perfection,  and  ultimately  our  perfect  happiness,  is 
at  the  same  time  the  perfection  of  our  social  relations. 

Therefore,  Christ  explains  and  urges  on  us  our  social 
duties,  by  the  mouth  of  the  man  whom  He  has  placed 


124  THE   CHURCH   AND    SOCIAL   WORK. 

in  the  world  to  speak  in  His  name,  the  head  of  His 
Church  ;  He  speaks  of  them  when  we  come  to  speak 
to  Him  before  the  Altar,  and  when  He  comes  to  rechne 
on  our  hearts  at  the  Communion  rail ;  He  speaks  of 
them  to  us  in  the  silence  of  our  own  room  when  we 
pray  ;  He  speaks  of  them  to  us  from  His  pulpit,  in  the 
confessional,  and  by  means  of  good  books  and  good 
advisers.  And  there  is  none  of  those  social  duties  of  which 
He  speaks  more  often  or  more  urgently  than  charity. 

Charit}^  is  the  very  essence  of  Christ's  rehgion.  He 
came  to  save  us  by  winning  our  love.  He  has  spent  his 
heart's  blood  for  us  to  win  our  love.  He  is  present  with 
us  night  and  day  to  win  our  love.  He  has  won  it.  We 
are  only  anxious  to  show  Him  our  love.  He  tells  us 
Himself  how  to  show  it.  "A  new  Commandment  I  give 
you  that  you  love  one  another,  as  I  have  loved  you 
that  you  love  one  another."  "By  this  shall  all  men 
know  that  you  are  My  disciples  if  you  love  one  another." 
"  n  any  man  receiveth  one  of  these  little  ones  in  My 
name  he  receiveth  Me."  And  the  second  commandment, 
like  unto  the  first,  is,  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as 
thyself."  Nay,  He  tells  us,  that  when  we  come  to  the 
end  of  life,  He  will  meet  each  of  us  at  the  gates  of  death, 
and  will  take  account  chiefly  of  our  charity,  and  by  that 
settle  our  eternal  fate.  He  will  say  to  you,  "  Come 
ye  blessed  of  My  Father,  possess  you  the  Kingdom 
...  for  I  was  hungry  and  you  gave  Me  to  eat,  I  was 
thirsty  and  you  gave  Me  to  drink  ..."  And  when 
you  will  say  that  you  did  none  of  these  things  to  Him, 
He  will  say,  "  Amen  I  say  to  you,  as  long  as  you  did 
it  to  one  of  these  My  least  brethren,  you  did  it  to  Me." 

And  it  is  not  as  though  He  will  be  pleased  if  we  have 
done  these  things,  but  does  not  insist  that  we  do  them. 
No  !  For  He  will  say  to  some  :  "  Depart,  you  cursed,  into 
everlasting  fire,  for  I  was  hungry  and  you  gave  Me  not 
to  eat,  I  was  thirsty  and  you  gave  Me  not  to  drink, 
.  .  .  Amen,  I  say  to  you,  as  long  as  you  did  it  not  to 
one  of  these  least,  you  did  it  not  to  Me.  And  these 
shall  go  into  everlasting  punishment,  but  the  just  into 
hfe  everlasting." 


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THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


RETURuZC  NOW    1983 

lk»iN0V4   1983  0 


) 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILir/ 


AA    000  892  548    9 


